Prodigal Children
by Rowena DeVandal
Summary: Part 5 of the Logan and Angela saga! The pair have returned to Weapon X to protect what they hold most dear. Rated M, language, violence and other content. COMPLETE.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** First things first...never upload a new story when you haven't been to sleep yet...to do so may cause forgetting to do things, like put in the author's note...:) Secondly, hello everyone! Here it is, the apparently much-anticipated next installment to my ongoing series! This story is both shorter and longer than some of the others...shorter in that it has fewer chapter than the last two, but it's longer word-wise...i've experimented with a few things here and you will be told the story from many different points of view...next, please keep in mind that the events of X-Men 3: The Last Stand have not happened and likely WILL not happen...this was true of the last story, which puts everything from that point forward strictly AU from a movieverse perspective...however, i hold to Bryan Singer's original intent, which was that the events of X:1 and X:2 were presented in a way to be plausible in our own world...so no aliens, no cosmic forces, a lot of what fans of the comics are used to will also not happen or will not happen in a canon way...however, in regards to X:3, i may explore some of the events at a later date, but there are no guarantees...

Also, to any new readers...please keep in mind that this is part of a much larger story...so if you have not read "Torn Asunder", "Devil Inside", "The Paragon of Animals" and "We Are Vengeance", this story may not make sense!

**Disclaimer:** I do not own the X-Men or any of their cool stuff and ideas...it all belongs to 20th Century Fox and Marvel...this includes Logan, which breaks my heart...Angela, Evie, Atlas, Medusa, Totem and a host of other people DO belong to me, along with many events and scenarios that came from my own fevered imagination...no money is being made off this and no copyright infringement is intended...I am simply borrowing some of my favorite characters and having fun with them!

**Now read on:)**

* * *

**Prodigal Children**

**By**

**Rowena DeVandal**

Prologue

_"…We're giving up. We're coming home." The words echo through your mind, stated so simply, so plainly, yet in a way even you believe them. In a way, you have come home, come full circle. The guards usher you warily into their Humvee, reluctant to leave you unrestrained, but at the same time following the orders they'd been given. After all, if this were a trick, you would try to kill them as soon as possible. But you make the trip to the base proper without incident, although a couple of the guards keep eyeing you and licking their lips as though anticipating some alone time with you. Let them try it; last time you were with the program and someone tried that, he was taken away in pieces._

_The vehicle comes to a stop in front of a massive hangar, easily large enough to house all three of the X-Men's Blackbirds, Cerebro, the Danger Room and the infirmary and still have room to spare. You don't really want to know what they use it for, but the huge door rolls up about eight feet and a squad of about a dozen Marines comes out in full battle gear surrounding a man dressed simply in fatigues. Once the Marines are in position, the guards in the Humvee open their doors and drag you and your husband out, shoving you roughly forward to face the man who ruined your life. "So Hellcat, I see you took my advice." He says smugly._

_You glance at your husband before replying. "In a matter of speaking." You take a step forward and the Marines immediately bring their weapons to bear, twelve very large automatic rifles pointed at your chest. "You win, we give up. But we have conditions."_

_"I don't believe you're in a position to bargain, Hellcat. After all, we can take you out, both of you, quite easily." He takes a step forward and sneers. "We can kill you with enough rounds and put him down in a coma the same way. Once you're out, we'll dissect the both of you, recycle your adamantium. We can eliminate you, though that is not the ideal choice."_

_"On the other hand," you say, taking another step forward, "I think we have a lot to bargain with, if you'll listen." Less than eight feet separate you from the Director now, well within springing distance for you. "But I think our conditions are more than doable, if you'll hear me out."_

_He crosses his arms and looks you over. You don't look the way that you did when you were previously with the program. Your hair is much longer and now that Storm's wedding is over, the blond streaks have been replaced with blood red. You haven't aged a day, not physically, but your eyes have a haunted look, the kind of thing usually only seen in refugees, disaster survivors and people who have been on the run. In a way, you're all three of those things rolled into one little package. The last thing he notices about you is your hand, specifically the left one. He glances from you to Wolverine and back again, and his eyes hold sudden understanding. "You married him," He states._

_You nod. "I did. But that's only one of the conditions; we want to remain a team and I think you'll agree that we were the best team you ever had. Those other four jokers you have certainly don't measure up."_

_He narrows his eyes, but nods in agreement. "I believe we can keep that arrangement. Regardless of what you may believe, I am not heartless." Wolverine snorts and both you and the Director glance at him with a glare. "In fact, I believe we can even arrange for you to share quarters, if that happens to be another of your conditions."_

_"It is."_

_You stare at each other for a long time, but neither one of you is willing to back down. "So, any others conditions? And what will happen if we refuse any of them?"_

_"Yes, there's more. And if they aren't all met, we'll kill you all and disappear." The Director throws his head back and laughs, but you just scowl at him. "Believe me, things have changed since you last saw us in action. We got better."_

_"Very well. Name your conditions and I'll see what I can do."_

_"You will leave the X-Men alone and never attack their home base again. Even without us, they can beat you. We showed them how."_

_He frowned and stroked his chin. "Professor Xavier has many…resources that we find intriguing. I can't make that promise."_

_"You _will_ make that promise or you're about to take your last breath."_

_He gives you a hard look. "Very well. The X-Men will be left alone."_

_You glance at your husband, who nods curtly; he's telling the truth. "Good."_

_"Anything else?"_

_"No reconditioning. We don't need it. We're here of our own free will. We can't deny what we are anymore."_

_"Nothing about your precious daughter?"_

_You wince at the mention of your child. She'd been removed from the mansion before the attack began, but three days later Cyclops received a signal from the black box of Blackbird Three. "She's gone."_

_"I know that, you told me as much."_

_"No, I mean she's really gone. The plane went down and she didn't make it. Neither did Storm or Atlas."_

_"I see." The Director looks at Wolverine, who has his head lowered, fists clenched at his sides. "Is that true, Wolverine?"_

_"Yeah," He says, his voice tight. He looks up and his eyes are hard. "She was all we had to live for an' she's gone."_

_The Director looks back at you in time to watch you wipe away a tear before it can make its way down your face. That, more than anything, seems to convince him that it's true. "Very well. If there's nothing else?"_

_You shake your head. "No, that's it." You take a deep breath and look him in the eye. "We surrender."_

_"Good." He motions to the Marines and they secure your hands behind your back. You glance over to Wolverine and see they've done the same to him. "We may not need to recondition you, but you still need to be tested, scanned and punished for your insubordination, not to mention the senseless destruction of half the active bases over the past ten years." He snorts at you with disdain. " What ever made you think you could stay out of our hands forever?"_

_You don't dignify his question with a response; you simply glare at him with a burning hatred. He smiles at you, but the hatred in his eyes is cold. No one in this situation has any illusions about what's going on here. The Director knows that as soon as you get the chance, either you or Wolverine – possibly both – will try to kill him. You've lost your daughter, so you have nothing to lose in the attempt. You know that the Director has always wanted his favorite weapons back, if for no other reason than to prove to anyone else that might be thinking about escape that no one can get away forever. You both believe that you'll get your way in the end. Only time will tell who's right._

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chapter 1

(Storm)

We got away clean, no pursuit. Rogue and Remy stayed with Evie for the whole flight, reassuring her that she would see her parents again soon. We followed Angela's instructions to the letter, contacting her friend Ricky in Detroit as soon as we were within fifteen minutes of the city. He said that he'd expected something like this someday, that Angela had left him instructions on what to do in case anyone contacted him for assistance. He told us where we could land the jet in relative secrecy, to expect a friend of his with a package for us, as well as some code phrases to use. I felt a bit silly about the last part, but I didn't make these rules. With no choice but to trust him – Angela did and she doesn't trust easily – we did as he asked. Ten minutes later, we heard a motorcycle approaching. We all tensed up, expecting the worst, but the person simply parked the bike, stepped off and retrieved something from a pack strapped to the back. When the figure took off their helmet, I was shocked to see it was a woman, her long red hair streaming down her back. She walked towards us, but stopped about ten feet away.

"You must be the superheroes," She said, her hand straying to her jacket pocket. Did she have a weapon in there?

Rogue stepped forward, being more or less invulnerable to harm, to answer. "We ain't no superheroes," She replied, crossing her arms.

The woman nodded. "Good." She took her hand out of her pocket and held it out in a welcoming gesture, so I shook it. "I'm Erin McKenzie, Ricky's friend. He wanted me to give you this." She hefted the package and Sam took it from her with ease. "There's a message in there for the little lady too."

We didn't need to ask who that was; we knew she meant Evie. "Thanks Erin. My name's…"

She cut me off with a curt wave. "No, don't tell me. I don't want to know. Just keep her safe, all right? She's more important than you know."

Rogue was instantly suspicious, narrowing her eyes as she stepped forward. "An' just what do you know 'bout her anyway?"

Erin smiled. 'You're not the only ones with gifts and neither is she,' we all heard in our heads, 'I don't see as much or as well as she does, but I do know that there will be a day when what she sees might just save us all.'

I shook my head. "You're a mutant. Why didn't Ricky tell us?"

"Ricky doesn't know. I'm a precog too, but not nearly as powerful as that little girl. Dr. McCoy consulted with me once on precognition and its relationship to psychometry. I don't have that, so I couldn't tell him anything. But I did tell him that we precogs always know when something can't be changed or not changed enough to make a difference."

"Some things are just meant to happen," I murmured, quoting the Professor.

She shook her head. "Not exactly. Some things are simply always true. Other things _need_ to happen. If there's one thing we precogs know, it's that everything does happen for a reason."

"An…Ricky's friend is always saying that," Sam added, "but she says she's not psychic."

"Then she isn't." She shrugged. "I can't tell you any more than that." Suddenly, she went stiff all over and her blue eyes were suddenly covered with a gray film. When she spoke, her voice held a dreamlike quality. "You have to go. Police are coming. They can't know you've been here. Someone called them to find a jet with five mutants, one of them a small child. They kill you and take the girl." A shudder ran through her and her eyes returned to normal. "Get the fuck out of here. I never saw you."

She turned to go as the others went to re-board the jet, but I grabbed her arm to stop her. "Wait! How do you know Evie will see something that'll save us?"

"Because I saw it. And it's simply true." She jerked her arm from my hand and ran back to her motorcycle. I hurried back to the jet and we took off with more questions than answers. I looked back to where Evie had finally drifted into a fitful sleep, wondering just what the hell was really going on here.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Scott)

I never realized how much Logan's presence had filled the mansion until it wasn't there anymore. Add to that Angela's own formidable personality and the place felt positively empty. I was shocked when Charles told me what he'd done for them before they left. How they could possibly want to believe that the past ten years hadn't happened, that their daughter was dead, was completely beyond me. But we maintained the illusion, going so far as to put up a memorial marker for her, Sam and Storm in the back of the garden, next to Jean's and Alex's. I didn't think it was necessary, but I suppose if anyone from Weapon X decides to come in some night and check, they'll find that and realize there's no way it would be there if it wasn't true.

It took several weeks to get the mansion in good enough shape for the students to return, but once they got back they all threw themselves into their studies with a fervor I'd only seen once before, after Stryker had invaded over ten years ago. The biggest difference between then and now was that none of the children had been harmed, thanks to the evacuation plan Logan and Angela had designed based on their daughter's vision. Having an hour's lead-time on the assault force had played a major role in that, for which I will always be supremely grateful.

Of course, everyone wanted to know where Logan and Angela were as soon as they got back. We simply told them that they'd been sent on a secret mission and would return when they returned. Some of the kids – mostly younger ones – accepted that without question. The older ones were harder to convince, but it was the story we agreed to stick to. It didn't escape anyone's notice that Storm, Sam, Remy, Rogue and Evie were also gone. We told them they had taken Evie to a secure location due to the attack on the school, but were being asked to keep her away until we could be certain they weren't going to come back. Again, it didn't satisfy anyone's curiosity, but we certainly were not going to tell them the truth.

Logan and Angela had gone back to Weapon X and their daughter was taken away to protect her. What I wasn't sure about was if they were protecting her from Weapon X or from themselves.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_It's been two weeks since Mommy and Daddy sent me away. Aunt 'Roro says she don't know when we can go back home, but that we'll go as soon as it's safe again. When I asked her about that, she just smiled a little but she seemed sad at the same time. I asked her where Mommy and Daddy were, but she said she didn't know and left the room. I think she's lying to me._

_Some lady gave her a letter from Mommy and Daddy to give to me, but the letter says that I'll know when the right time is to open it. She got a letter too and I guess it had stuff in there she had to tell me, because she sat me down and told me all these things I don't get. But I'm very sad because she said Mommy and Daddy are gonna be gone for kind of a long time and that we can't go home til they say it's safe. I miss them._

_They took me to this little house that's real far away from everything. I get my own room and stuff, but I liked it when my room was part of Mommy and Daddy's room. I don't have to go to regular school anymore, but Aunt Marie says she's gonna keep teaching me anyway. It's not fair. Why do I still have to do school stuff if I'm not in school? They won't tell me where the house is, like what state or if we're close to a town and they say it's for my own good. I'm almost ten years old. How old do I have to be before I can do my own stuff for my own good?_

_I just want to see Mommy and Daddy. I miss them so much._

_Love, Evie Marie Logan._

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Logan)

Going quietly into that base was the second hardest thing I've ever had to do. Tied for first was kissing my daughter goodbye and watching her leave on the plane that eventually killed her and kissing Angela goodbye and leaving her on a lonely road in Canada. At least I got Angela back eventually. I'd never hold my little girl again.

The Director was a man of his word, I'll give him that. They tested us all right, everything from basic medical to serious combat. Tested our senses, our healing factors – even Angela's nine lives. I almost gutted the fucker who did that one, but they threatened to cut her heart out if I didn't back off. I got his scent though, so if he's ever sent anywhere with us, he won't make it back. And they scanned us, from full-body MRI's to telepathically. I don't know what the hell they were looking for, but they seemed satisfied with the results. And oh yes, they punished us.

They fell back on their old favorite, sensory deprivation, but the facilities they used for that were much improved over the ones they'd used at Alkali Lake. The walls, floors and ceilings were made of some kind of material that absorbed any sounds that I made, giving the air a dead quality. It also had the added effect of having no real texture to it and it felt almost buoyant, so even when I lay down, I felt like I was floating. The temperature was kept at a constant that had to be so close to human normal that I couldn't actually feel what it was. It was pitch black in there and I couldn't see my own hand in front of my face. The air seemed absolutely still, but there had to be some way to filter it or else I would have suffocated on my own carbon monoxide before they were done with me. They did bring me food every so often, but it was completely tasteless and without texture, pushed through a slot that was so well made there was no sound when it was opened or closed. I don't know how often they fed me, but the times were not regular. I might get a bowl less than an hour after the first one, then nothing for another fifteen hours, only to get another one three hours later. They did that to mess with my perception of time, so I would have no way of knowing how long I was there.

I was also butt naked, except for my wedding ring. I cut the hand off the guy who tried to take it from me and the Director had just laughed and told him to let me keep it. At first I thought he might have grown a conscience in the past twenty-five years. After an eternity in the dark, I realized it was another punishment. I had the ring, but my wife was out of reach. Having the ring made it harder to deal with being alone and the bastard knew that. The only other thing I had to prove that I was still alive and not some fucking zombie was my claws, which I would pop and retract over and over again for hours on end, til I finally fell victim to the hallucinations that would always start. Sometimes I would swear I could hear Angela on the other side of the tiny cell, other times it was Evie, crying that she didn't want to leave me. When that happened, I would attack the walls, howling to get out of there, find my woman, find my little girl. Then I would remember that my little girl was gone and break down weeping. I cried myself to sleep a lot in that cell.

I don't know how long it was after they threw me in there that they finally opened the door to let me out, but they eventually did. The lights seemed painfully bright, the slightest sound hurt my ears and the smells…God, I've never wanted to vomit more in my entire life, but the healing factor somehow won't let me. They tossed me into a shower and blasted me first with icy water, then changed over to scalding hot. I snarled in pain and anger, popping my claws and lashing out at the soldiers who brought me there, but they just laughed and hit a switch. I realized the floor was metal mesh, for drainage I had thought, but it was electrified. I fell down twitching as thousands of volts arced through my body. I passed out with the sound of their laughter ringing in my ears.

When I woke, I was in a different room, surrounded by a scent that was both familiar and comforting, but I was still a bit confused. I could feel fingers running through my hair, a low humming of a song I almost recognized, but I didn't trust it. I'd had this hallucination before, my head in Angela's lap while she comforted me and hummed to me until I finally slept. I shook off the imaginary hand and popped my claws before opening my eyes, ready to lash out in the darkness at things that weren't there. My hand was already on its way down before my head caught up with the rest of me and I managed to stop it with my claws an inch from Angela's face. "Darlin', is it really you?" I asked and I hardly recognized my own voice, rusty from disuse.

She nodded, tears in her eyes and I fell into her arms. I held her, kissed her, ran my hands over every inch of her to make sure she was real. Her hair was much shorter, barely grazing her shoulders and the blood red streaks were gone. She returned every touch, every kiss and we fell upon each other like we were starving. In a way, we were starved; hungry for sensation, we tore into each other with complete abandon. Like animals. I'm sure they had some kind of surveillance in that room, their own little live sex show - see the animals mate and all that - but I didn't give a fuck. Much like the time I killed her after Alkali Lake and she came back, she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen and I wanted her so much I couldn't help myself, so I didn't even try.

We woke up several hours later, wrapped up in each other, a rough blanket tossed carelessly over us. I blinked in the dim light and tried to get out of the small bed without waking her, but she sat straight up as soon as I moved. "Logan!" She shouted, looking around frantically.

I took her in my arms. "Shh darlin', I'm here," I soothed, stroking her hair and she went limp. "I ain't goin' nowhere."

"Oh gods Logan, it was awful," She said, her voice shaking. She told me about everything that had happened to her, including the part where yes indeed, she had been given to a couple guards to "teach her a lesson". I laughed with her when she mentioned that they'd have to sit down to pee from now on. Then she was stuck in her own deprivation cell and her experiences were much the same as my own. "When they threw me in here, I didn't know what to expect. I mean, there's the bed, barely big enough for two and some clothes, but I didn't know if they were gonna send more men in here to rape me or what. But when they tossed you in, I thought you were dead. It took me almost an hour to get you on the bed and you didn't wake up for another hour at least."

"Hey, it's all right tiger," I said, tracing her lips with my fingertip. "Take more'n a little jolt to kill me."

"Lucky for me." She pressed her forehead to mine, closed her eyes and shuddered. "Oh gods, we're really back here aren't we?"

"Yup, we sure are. Torture an' everythin', just like I remember." I kissed her softly and she looked up at me. "But this time it'll be different."

"How?"

"Cuz this time we got each other." Her eyes filled with tears and she laid her head in my lap. I stroked her hair until she fell back to sleep, then eased her back to her side of the bed. I got up and pulled on a pair of worn camouflage pants, then sat down heavily in the only chair in the room. It wasn't very big, maybe ten feet square, the walls and floor bare concrete, a metal cabinet in the corner that doubled as a closet, a small scarred table and the single chair. As I looked around, I noticed a something hanging from a pair of hooks on the wall near the door. I crossed over and removed the items, already hating the way they felt in my hand. It was a pair of necklaces, simple ball chains with tags hanging on them, one for each of us. The next time we left this room, Logan and Angela would be no more, replaced forever by Wolverine and Hellcat. I turned and pressed my back to the door, then slid down to the floor, brought my knees up and leaned my head on them. I gripped the tags so hard that blood ran through my fingers and dripped on the floor. I thought I knew how it felt to hate them before. I was wrong.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Angela woke up again a few hours later. I was still sitting by the door, but I'd let the tags drop from my hand long before, the wound healed shortly after. She padded over to me and ran her hand through my hair. "Logan, we'll get through this," She whispered and I looked up into her eyes. "We'll do what we have to do, but we'll get through, take it to the end." I nodded and she grasped my hand and pulled me to my feet. "Come on, it's almost six o'clock. Time to face the music."

We dressed quickly in the clothing provided, the non-descript olive drab that militaries the world over used in abundance. I bent over and retrieved the tags from the floor, still a bit sticky with my blood. I held Angela's out to her and she swallowed hard. She actually still had her old ones, but had stopped wearing them years ago and eventually replaced both hers and mine with tags she'd gotten made for us. We left those behind when we walked away from the X-Men, not wanting to give them something else to torture or taunt us with. She took hers from me and ran her thumb over the characters engraved there, stained dark red from my blood, then sighed and slipped the chain over her head. I did the same a moment later and I swear it felt like the fucking thing weighed a thousand pounds. She slid her arms around me and rested her cheek against my chest, another shudder going through her. I leaned down and kissed the top of her head, rubbing my hands up and down her arms. "C'mon tiger, can't put it off any longer." She nodded and I opened the door.

A pair of guards appeared from across the hall as soon as our door closed behind us, leading me to believe there was some kind of surveillance in our room. I vowed to hunt it down and destroy by the end of the day. I didn't want anyone watching us while we were alone. We know they didn't trust us yet, but that would change soon enough. The men looked both of us over before one of them spoke. "I'm Davison, this is Grant. We're your day shadows til the Colonel tells us otherwise. You get Morrison and Miller at night."

"Colonel who?" Hellcat asked.

"Sidowski, who you will refer to as 'sir'."

"An' what do we call you?" I growled.

He frowned, his eyes going cold. "Just Davison. Apparently, you two technically outrank us."

I raised an eyebrow and filed the info away for future examination. "Fine. Take us to your leader." I said with a smirk. Davison just glared at me, but started walking down the hallway as Grant fell in behind us. "So, just the two o' ya? Ain't that takin' a bit of a risk?"

"Colonel Sidowski said we're to make nice and that means minimal guards. Says you two came back on your own and that you're to be trusted…to a point."

"I see. An' how do ya feel 'bout that personally?"

He stopped short and whipped around to face me. "I think it's bullshit. You're both nothing but a couple of wild animals who should be locked up and taught your place before we go sending you back out. I think that they should have left you locked in those sensory dep cells for a month. I think that the second you even look like you're gonna do something funny or put even one toe out of line, I'm gonna pump you so full of lead it'll take a year for it all to come back out. So shut your filthy fucking mouth and follow me."

"Damn," Hellcat said, crossing her arms, "for someone who's beneath us in rank you sure do have a funny way of showing respect for your superiors."

"You're only 'superior' because the Director said you were. Personally, I hope you fuck up on your first mission so I can get rid of this bullshit babysitting assignment." Angela's eyes narrowed dangerously and she took a step forward. Before she could complete it, Davison had his sidearm out and pointed at her chest. "Do it, just fucking do it. Give me an excuse."

"Leave him alone, 'Cat," I cautioned, catching her arm, "he ain't worth it."

"Whatever you say Wolverine." She replied, backing off but keeping her eyes trained on him. "You watch yourself, Davison. Don't ever let me catch you alone. It'll be the last thing you'll regret."

He sneered at her, but put his sidearm away and we continued down the hall. My feelings about that confrontation were extremely mixed. On the one hand, I was cheering inside. Davison was just the kind of asshole that would try something and we'd have every excuse to take him out. On the other, I was deeply disturbed by how quickly Hellcat and I had fallen back into familiar patterns. Back at Alkali Lake, we had been feared by everyone except the highest ranking officers on the base because we were known for our hair-trigger tempers and dealing with those who insisted on testing us in very permanent ways. Towards the end, it was rare for us to be punished for those actions, because we were the very best at what we did and they couldn't afford to take us out of the field. I absently touched the band of adamantium on my left ring finger and hoped it would be enough to remind me that things were a lot different this time.

We finally came to a set of double doors that opened into a large room set up like a lecture hall. Davison and Grant escorted us to a pair of seats in the front row, each of them taking the seats to either side of us. A few minutes later, more people came filing in, but I didn't pay attention to any of them until a familiar scent filled my nose. I turned in my chair and saw Tigress walk in with a man a couple inches shorter than her, with dark hair held back in a short ponytail at his neck. Both were dressed in the same fatigues as the rest of us, but she managed to make hers look like the trendy clothes that you see in magazines. Hellcat turned to look as well and hissed when she saw them. "Asp. I really owe him one," She whispered.

"What for?" I asked as we turned back around.

"He almost killed Totem. Probably would have worked if we hadn't gotten the antivenin in him in time."

I was confused. "When was this?"

"Back when you went out of your head after the mission to retrieve Cyclops. The winter before we had Evie." She clenched her jaw at the mention of our daughter. I looked down and screwed my eyes shut against the burning that threatened to turn into tears. We both blamed Weapon X for her death as much as Hellcat blamed them for the death of her first child. Just one more reason to prove ourselves to them so we could turn around and take them out someday. I pulled myself together, then took her hand and gave it a squeeze. She looked at me gratefully. "Thanks."

"No problem."

Before we could say anything else, a door opened behind the dais and three men and a woman stepped out. They scanned the crowd for a few minutes, then the woman stepped up and cleared her throat. All the background chatter stopped immediately, all eyes upon her. "Good morning troops," she began, "for those of you who don't know me, I'm Colonel Sidowski." She looked pointedly at Hellcat and me. "We have a lot to do today, so I'll just give you your assignments." She consulted a sheaf of papers in her hand before continuing. "Before I give out your assignments for today, I'd like you to welcome back a couple of …old friends." Her lips thinned as she said that and I could tell she was not nearly as happy to see us as the Director had been. "Some of you may have heard of Wolverine and Hellcat. Let's make sure they feel right at home." Dead silence followed, broken only by a single cough from someone in the crowd. After a few seconds, she carried on. "All right then. Alpha squad, you're on the north perimeter today, we've had some trouble with hikers in the Groom Mountains again. Bravo, you get the south, same problem. Charlie, Delta, you get the east and west. Whiskey X-ray, follow me."

Davison leaned over to me. "That's you, asshole."

He grabbed my arm but I shook him off. "I know, Davison." I stood up and glared at him. "Ya better watch yourself or I'll make sure Hellcat catches you alone." He returned my glare and we stood like that for long moment. He finally looked away and fell in behind us. We followed the Colonel through the door at the back behind Tigress and Asp, which led into a much smaller conference room. The Colonel was already seated and we stood at attention waiting to be recognized.

She looked us over, taking in every detail but especially Hellcat and myself. From what I'd gathered when we first arrived, the two of us had slipped into something like legendary status amongst the program, the only two that had ever gotten away and stayed gone for over twenty years. After an uncomfortable two minutes, she nodded. "At ease. Have a seat."

We nodded back and sat down, us on one side with our shadows just behind us, Asp and Tigress on the other with no one to guard them. The four of us fell into an unconscious staring contest and I could feel the hatred coming from both of them. Here we were, the original unstoppable team, ready to take the crown away from them. Colonel Sidowski rifled through her papers and cleared her throat. "Welcome back you two."

"Thank you, sir." We replied, eyes still locked with the mutants across from us.

"Before I begin your briefing, there are a few things we would like to know." She shuffled the papers again, found the one she was looking for and cleared her throat. "Hellcat, about ten years ago, you managed to subdue both Asp and Tigress in under three minutes. Their official report and all telepathic scans indicate that you employed some kind of sonic weapon, which disabled Tigress. Is that true?"

"After a fashion," She replied.

"Would you care to elaborate?"

"I had a team with me, one of which is a mutant who has bat-like characteristics, one of which is echolocation."

"I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with that term."

Hellcat rolled her eyes, but continued to stare at her adversary across the table. "Sonar, sir, like bats use to hunt for insects. In our training sessions with her, Wolverine and I discovered that those of us with enhanced hearing can be disabled easily, since the frequency is quite painful to those who can hear it."

"And you knew in advance that Tigress had enhanced hearing?"

"Yes sir."

"And how did you come about this information?"

"Analysis of the Hudson Bay files I stole when I went to retrieve Wolverine after Dr. Hallett attempted to bring him back to the program by force."

"Those files were triple encrypted. How did you break it?"

Hellcat shrugged. "I know a guy. And don't bother asking me his name, I only know him as Buzz."

"I see." The Colonel took up another paper and continued. "Now then, their report indicates that you had Totem with you. Is that also true?"

"Yes sir."

"And where is he now?"

"I assume he's at home, sir. I haven't seen him since before we left New York."

"And by 'home' you mean the home of one Charles Xavier? Founder of the X-Men?"

"Yes sir." The staring continued.

"Does it not also double as a school for young mutants?"

"After a fashion."

The Colonel slammed down the papers and stood up. "Cut the crap, Hellcat! And all of you, stand down! Your petty pissing contest can wait until later, understood?" Asp and Tigress looked away, shifting their gaze to the Colonel. I smirked with satisfaction before turning my own eyes to the head of the table. "Now that I have your attention, the four of you need to learn something _right now_. William Stryker was an idiot. He let you get away with murder, but that's not going to happen on my watch." She turned to me and Hellcat, her eyes stony. "Now the Director tells me I can't separate the two of you and I'm not about to countermand his orders. But let me make it perfectly clear that as long as I am in charge of this facility, you will accord me the proper respect. That means if I ask you a question, I want a complete answer, no more of your bullshit. You will also keep in mind that _we own you_, all four of you, understood?"

We all mumbled "yes sir" and she sat back down. "Now, the school."

"Professor Xavier has been known to take in mutants with dangerous powers to help them learn control," Hellcat said. "While they are there, they are required to undertake a normal curriculum so they also have a proper education. Only those who pass a rigorous physical exam when they come of age are asked if they would like to join the X-Men, though it is by no means required." She leaned forward and returned Colonel Sidowski's stony glare. "Xavier would never force someone to fight for him."

"And how many students did he have when you two left?"

"Maybe a dozen, no more than that."

"Do you know their names and powers?"

"No sir, I do not. Wolverine and I left before the latest batch arrived."

"Very well." She couldn't hide her disappointment, but it was true. We didn't know who they were or how many were there anymore. We'd just graduated a bunch of kids and a few of them had stayed on, but neither one of us were about to volunteer that information. The Colonel searched for another paper and went on. "Now, back to Totem. His file indicates that he had extensive telepathic conditioning and that the two of you had also undergone some as well. How was that overcome?"

"Professor Xavier broke down the blocks and reversed the implanted commands. As I recall, he referred to them as 'amateurish' and 'sloppy'."

Colonel Sidowski's mouth thinned to a harsh line, but she continued. "I see. Thank you Hellcat." She turned her eyes to me. "Wolverine, your file indicates that you had a memory suppression chip implanted shortly before you underwent the bonding process. However, your behavior over the past ten years suggests that it is no longer functioning. How did that happen?"

"It was removed, sir, over ten years ago," I replied.

"So you knew about it?" I nodded. "How?"

"The Hudson Bay files mentioned it an' it was confirmed by a neurosurgeon."

"And how was it removed?"

"Went in through my nose. Hurt like fuckin' hell."

"So you now have complete recall?"

"Yes sir, all the way back to when I was born."

"And precisely how long ago was that?"

I shrugged. "Oh, 'bout a hundred twenty-seven years ago." Colonel Sidowski went pale, while Asp and Tigress both gaped at me. "What?"

"You expect me to believe you're that old?" She asked.

"Yes, I do, 'cause it's true. 'Cat here's a hundred eleven." Now everyone's eyes shifted between the two of us and the Colonel tossed down her papers in disgust. "Got a problem?"

"Unless you're lying, you're telling me that you two are the oldest living mutants on record."

"Nah, I think Sabretooth's got a coupla years on me. An' I ran into this guy once who claimed to be at Valley Forge."

Sidowski shook her head. "No, this is some kind of trick, isn't it?"

"Sorry Colonel, it's the truth." I leaned forward and gave her my best feral grin. "Kinda puts a hole in your nuclear power an' x-rays theory, don't it?"

"Something like that," She muttered under her breath as she took up the papers again. "Very well, that will be all for today. Tigress, Asp, you already have your mission assignment, continue preparing for that. You leave at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow. Hellcat, Wolverine, report to lab seven at oh-nine-thirty. Dismissed."

We stood up and filed out of the conference room through a side door, Davison and Grant still flanking us. Asp and Tigress were waiting for us in the hallway, cocky grins on their faces. I stopped short and growled. "Dahell you smilin' 'bout?"

"Lab seven's where they keep the Phoenix." Asp said with a chuckle. "That little girl's gonna rape your mind."

I narrowed my eyes and took a step towards him. "Whattaya mean, that's where they 'keep' her?"

"Just that. Kid's powerful, so they have to keep her contained. Took them almost a week to calm her down after that mission where they went to get your kid."

"They already had the telepaths scan us when we got here, why bother with another one?"

He shook his head, laughing. "You don't get it, do you Wolverine? No one here trusts you, either of you. Regular telepaths couldn't find anything, so they're using the big gun on you." He pushed away from the wall and he and Tigress started walking the other way. "Hope you're not trying to hide something, 'cause she'll find it, mark my words."

I spared a quick glance over to Angela, then followed Davison to lab seven. We didn't have anything to hide, so this all seemed pretty damn pointless to me. She shrugged at me and we made our way through the maze-like corridors to the lab. They wanted this kid to scan us? Let her.

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**Please review!**


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

(Rogue)

We finally got settled in the safe house Sam had found for us to hide out in until this whole thing was over. Buzzkill had left us a laptop on the jet to use to contact him. The note he left with it just said it had the same software as the special one he'd used for the underground all those years ago, which was a big relief to all of us. That computer had never been hacked into, even though there'd been many attempts through the years that the underground had been necessary. He didn't explain how it worked, but did say that any emails sent from this laptop would be sent only to the "Fairy Godmother". I don't really care how it works. I can work a computer, but I'm not a total gearhead like him and Kitty. As long as it works, I'm okay.

We sent our first message the moment we arrived, but the reply didn't come for a few days. When it did, we knew things were very bad indeed. A week later, we received another one that told us to stay away indefinitely and why. I cried so hard that night and nothing Remy did could calm me down. Logan and Angela had gone back to Weapon X, which was bad enough all by itself. But Buzz told us they'd had lots of meetings with the Professor before they left and that they seemed really different the day Scott flew them out there. He didn't know the details and I'm sure that was for his own protection as well as the rest of the school. But if I know Logan – and since he's still running around in my head, I think I do – he asked the Professor to do something to his memory to hide what really happened to us. It might seem extreme, but it is just the kind of thing he'd do. And considering how hard he'd fought before to get his memories back in the first place, having anything buried must have been a hell of a hard decision to make. But one thing is certain, he did it because they'd gone back to hell and all because they love us.

I broke the news to Evie, but not about where they went; she's too young to understand what that means. I just told her the part about not being able to go back to the school and that her mommy and daddy were gonna be gone for a while. She cried for a while, which I expected, but she pulled herself together pretty quick. She's a tough little kid, not like she's got a choice with Logan and Angela for parents. But she was still sad all the time, missing her mom and dad. I prayed every night that they'd finish what they had to do fast so we could all be together again.

And I swear, if Logan does anything stupid, I'm kicking his fucking ass the next time I see him.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Professor X)

The repairs to the school were finished just in time for graduation. We had six open positions on the faculty, as well as on the Alpha team for the X-Men. Fortunately, Beta in its entirety chose to stay on as well as Totem, who took over the defense classes in Logan's absence. Sarah took over the strategy classes and life continued as close to normal as we could make it. But the children missed their absent teachers terribly, as did the rest of us.

Buzz had sent a computer with Sam and Rogue on the jet, which they will use to maintain contact with us. We received a message just hours after they'd gone, but we didn't send a reply until Logan and Angela had already left. They were naturally disappointed that they couldn't return home, but I was deeply fearful that we would find ourselves facing not Logan and Angela, but Wolverine and Hellcat someday, and I did not want their daughter to see her parents come in as the enemy. Perhaps I am a sentimental old fool, but I preferred to protect my surrogate granddaughter from that possibility rather than take the chance. Of course, with her gifts, it's likely she'd know they were coming long before the rest of us.

Still, the atmosphere at the mansion has changed in a very profound way. The few students we have that stay year-round seem quieter, better behaved than I remember. Perhaps they are doing this to honor the missing Wolverine in their own way, keeping themselves in line since he's not there to do it for them. The man himself wasn't around to appreciate the gesture, but would most likely smile about it later.

It should go without saying that I'm terribly worried about the pair of them. On a purely intellectual level, I know that their main reasons for going have nothing to do with this Phoenix, who's so much like Jean that the mental presence she projected when she attacked me was almost familiar. But underneath that familiarity was a ruthlessness that was completely at odds with the Jean Grey I knew and loved like a daughter. Phoenix is what Jean could have been had no one come to her and taught her that she must control the power. She was the first Omega class mutant I had ever encountered and simply touching her mind with my own was like being bathed in a fire that burned but didn't consume, and even that description pales next to the reality. Power on that level can be addictive, unless the person wielding it knows how to use it. But Jean had been taken away from us just as she was learning what she was truly capable of. If mutants are the future of humanity, Jean Grey was the future of mutantkind.

No, Logan and Angela have their own darkness to conquer, their own personal demons to slay before they will ever truly find peace. I know that they will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. Angela has a daughter she wishes to lay to rest properly and somewhere, there is a child that was created wholly from Logan's DNA, another daughter in her own way. They don't know the child they had together is still alive and well, living in seclusion. I saw to that, as much as it pained me to do so. I made them believe things that are not true, that this is nominally a prep school for a handful of powerful mutants who attend specifically for training in their gifts. They also believe that no mutant students remained in the school when they left us. They believe many things, all of which I had put there.

But the truth is still buried beneath those many complex layers of illusion, buried so deep in their subconscious where their feral instincts are hidden that no one would be able to find them. Even if the Phoenix did manage to discover the little black spot in the backs of their minds, it could be explained away as the feral side, the side that doesn't have coherent thoughts, only instinct. Even if she discovered the truth, she wouldn't be able to break down the barrier without bringing out the animals they willingly caged within.

At least, that's what I hope. My fears are much, much worse.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_It's been twenty days, eleven hours, nineteen minutes since my mom and dad sent me away. How funny is that? Just a few days ago, they were still Mommy and Daddy to me. But now they're mom and dad. I wonder if they'll be sad when I call them that, next time I see them. I guess this is what it's like to grow up, when Mommy and Daddy today are mom and dad tomorrow. I miss them._

_Aunt Marie still gives me school stuff to do, which is ok I guess. It gives me something to do and makes me feel a little bit like stuff will be normal again. But she won't tell me when we're going home. Uncle Remy, Uncle Atlas and Aunt 'Roro won't tell me either. I think what they're afraid to tell me is that my mom and dad aren't there anymore. They don't know I know that, but I do._

_I took their necklaces, you know. The ones what look like the tags soldiers wear, but had their names and pictures on them. My dad's has mom's picture with "Yours Forever" written on it and mom's has his picture with "Mine Forever". I think it's some kind of joke that they get but no one else does. They usually never took them off, except when they went away on their secret missions, but for some reason they were just laying on the dresser that day. When dad was carrying me out, I grabbed them both, so I could have something of theirs with me. Sometimes, when I touch them, I can see things. Sometimes, it's stuff from a long time ago, back before the bad men hurt them. Sometimes I see things from later, when they first came to the school. But sometimes I see things that I don't think happened yet and those scare me the most. I see them with the bad men and they're doing bad things, but somehow they're doing it to keep people safe. It's kind of confusing, but I'm afraid to ask Aunt Marie or anyone about it, cuz I think they'll be mad at me for looking._

_At least I'm not dreaming right now. I don't know why, but the dreaming things are always true. The awake things are only sometimes true. I don't know why that is, but it is. The Professor would know. I wonder if Aunt Marie can get a message to him so I can ask? I'll ask her at dinner tonight._

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Angela)

Asp hadn't exaggerated when he said that Phoenix would rape our minds. That's the only way to describe it, really. But the part that got me the most was the way she did it with the same amount of emotion I would have while eating lunch. She didn't even need to touch me or Logan to get what she wanted, she barely even glanced up from whatever she'd been doing when they brought us in. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you die. That's never happened to me, but it happened that afternoon and I hope it never happens again.

But then it was like she hit something and to be perfectly honest, I don't remember much after that. The next conscious thought I had came hours later, when I woke up groggy in the base infirmary, Logan stretched out on a cot next to mine. We found out later that we'd gone almost completely feral on them and Phoenix had given us some kind of mindblast to put us out. Over the next few days, we pieced together what happened, but it didn't make much sense to us.

Phoenix had started her scan, which I remember with an almost painful clarity, because she hadn't simply read our minds. She made us watch what she saw as well. So I saw everything from my earliest childhood - my parents, my younger twin brothers, the day my mutation manifested. But the most painful memories were the most recent - kissing Evie goodbye, the attack on the mansion, the terrible waiting afterwards for word from Storm. And the memory of Scott and Hank hunting down the black box from the Blackbird and returning with the grim news that our daughter was gone along with Sam and Storm. Rogue and Remy survived - thanks to her mutation, she'd been able to get them clear before the jet blew - but Sam, Storm and our daughter had been caught by the edge of the blast. According to the black box, something in the fuel system had apparently malfunctioned and everything went so fast from there it was a miracle that Rogue and Remy were still alive.

And that's where my conscious memory stops. After that, all I remember is rage and the need to kill something. We'd been strapped down to cold metal tables for the scan, but we'd apparently broken free and tried to attack Phoenix, her guards, her handlers, anyone we could reach and that's when Phoenix blasted us. We'd apparently surprised her, something that we later learned no one else had ever been able to do, and now she was afraid of us. Good.

About three weeks after our return, we had another meeting with Colonel Sidowski. Fortunately, Asp and Tigress weren't there. They were still off on whatever mission they'd been sent on, something that caused me and Logan no end of amusement. They'd been gone nearly all this time and they still hadn't finished. Had we gone, we'd have been back in two days, probably in time for dinner. And that stupid bitch had the nerve to call me "obsolete" all those years ago. I was going to make _her_ obsolete if it was the last thing I did.

Anyway, so we were meeting with Colonel, who had yet another stack of papers in front of her. She was frowning at them as though they offended her, but since she hadn't yet acknowledged our presence, we didn't know why they would. After about five minutes of standing at attention, she finally looked up and said "at ease". We relaxed into the stance known as "parade rest", which isn't really all that restful. She looked at us closely, like she was trying to figure something out, but there was nothing to see that she didn't already know.

She waved her hands to the two wooden chairs in front of her desk. "Have a seat." We complied and continued to wait for at least another five minutes while she looked us over. Eventually, she let out a long sigh. "Tell me something. How did you manage to keep the Phoenix out?"

I looked up at her sharply. "Keep her out? With all due respect sir, that kid ripped through my head like it was tissue paper!"

"But she says there's something in there that she can't get into, something locked away."

I rolled my eyes as Logan sighed. "How much have ya been told 'bout the mind o' the feral mutant, Colonel?" He asked.

"Just what I read in your files. Healing factors, some physical mutations, enhanced senses, but nothing about psychic ability, latent or otherwise. Why?"

"We got more'n just all that. See, way deep inside, we got this animal we can't always control. It ain't the claws or the healin' factor that makes us feral, sir. It's that animal that wants out."

"So you're saying that's what Phoenix saw, your feral side?" She sneered skeptically. "She's never said anything about any of the others."

"None of 'em ever tried to put it away, they've been here all this time. We got away an' had to learn to live with people again."

"So what she saw is the cage? If that's true, why can't she break it?"

He popped his claws and held them out, and she started in shock. "Ya really want her to do that here? I guarantee no one'll like that."

"Just what do you mean by that?"

"It means the last time the animal had total control o' me, I slaughtered half o' Alkali Lake. Unless ya want a repeat o' that, I suggest you leave this alone." He retracted his claws and sat back in the chair. "I woulda thought that what we did here was bad enough an' that ain't even half o' what we're capable of."

The Colonel narrowed her eyes and I decided to try and defuse the situation. "What he's trying to say, sir, is that we've spent over half our lives gaining control of it, letting it out when we need to and putting it away when we don't. The animal is just that, no thought, no conscience, just pure instinct. Your other operatives are always like that, putting it aside enough to be able to talk and function like people, but they're not people. Wolverine and I were never like that, we couldn't be."

"Why's that?"

"I'm gonna go out on a limb here and guess that the four you've had active in the past two decades are great at killing, not so much the stalking or infiltration, right?" Her eyes narrowed slightly, but she nodded. "I'm also going to guess that anyone else you've…recruited and trained since we left are about the same?" Again, she nodded. "In fact, I'll bet that you've had plenty of missions that were supposed to be covert go pretty much tits up since we left, right?" This time she winced and nodded. "Wolverine and I are the best at what we do, which is a lot more than just killing people. We were trained in infiltration first, because the both of us are different from even those mutants that are somewhat like us. We had to be able to operate among normal people until the time came to do otherwise. Think of that little black spot in the back of our minds as the killswitch and you'll understand why going any further would be very bad."

She frowned again, but nodded. "Understood. So who helped you learn that control?"

"Sir, when you've been around as long as we have, you learn it or you don't make it in the world. We were all alone with our mutation, these unkillable things in the middle of everyone else. But no matter how indestructible we seemed to be, we knew that there was something that could kill us forever, even if we didn't think about it. Sure, you can shoot me in the heart, but as long as there's a scrap of that thing left, I'll come back. Same thing with Wolverine, except it won't kill him right away. He'll come at you and take you out before he drops into a coma to heal up. I was born too late; there were already people everywhere so it was almost impossible to hide for long. So, you learn to act like a regular person so the people never know you're not. Or you die."

"So how come the later operatives never learned that trick? How come every time we sent them out for something that had to be done quietly, they failed?"

Logan rolled his eyes and snorted. "How old's the next oldest one of 'em? Forty? Fifty? They might as well be five."

"I don't understand," Sidowski said, shaking her head. "How does that affect anything?"

"The healin' factor don't just heal wounds, it heals the damage done by _time_. Whether ya know it or not, just sittin' there doin' nothin', your body's got cells dyin' off every second. Some of 'em regenerate, most of 'em don't. Sure, ya look pretty good right now but you're what? Not even forty yet? But ya still use lots o' stuff to make ya look younger. Face cream, makeup, you got a ton o' scents on ya that all add up to fightin' the clock."

"Y-you can smell the products I use?" Her hand went unconsciously to her face, touching the places where people get fine lines that eventually turn into wrinkles.

"Sir, with all due respect, ya smell like a walkin' salon. My healin' factor takes care o' all that. For every year I'm alive, you might as well age ten or twenty for all I know. Hellcat's damage gets healed while she's out if she gets killed, more slowly the rest o' the time. But all the other operatives ain't been 'round as long as we have. If the two o' us are in our prime, they're barely outta puberty. They got somethin' to prove, that they're better than us 'old dogs'. Fact is, they ain't grown up enough to do more'n get themselves in trouble."

"Now look here, Wolverine. Asp and Tigress have a seventy percent success rate. Demon and Vulture have seventy-three percent. Those are not bad numbers."

"What's your files say 'bout us?" He asked, crossing his arms.

"Uh, let me check." She rifled through the papers for a minute before pulling one out and looking it over. Her eyes widened and she looked up at us in astonishment. "Uh, it says here your success rate was close to ninety-seven percent." She put the paper down and looked at us curiously. "How can that be?"

Logan shrugged. "We're the best, always have been." He leaned forward in his chair and gave her an icy stare. "We learned to hide ourselves before the word 'mutant' was even known. We had to, like she said, we had no choice. We can blend, pass for normal. Hell, I've fought in every war since World War I, which I'm sure is why Stryker was so interested in me."

She turned her gaze back to me. "And what about you? How do you think he found you?"

I shrugged. "Sir, if I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't be here right now. If I had to guess, I'd say it's because of my paper trail. I changed my name a lot, moved around, but I always kept a bank account wherever I went. I didn't think anything of it at the time, not until it was too late, but once I got away from Alkali Lake, pretty much all of my money went offshore, numbered accounts only." I smiled as she narrowed her eyes at me. "Yeah, I still have a lot of money, but you'll never get it. Sorry."

"Yeah I'll bet," She muttered sarcastically. "So what are you suggesting I do? Recall my active operatives and keep them around here until they grow up?"

I sighed and Logan shook his head. "No sir, that would be stupid," he said. "Send 'em out on stuff that don't need finesse; frontal assaults, guerilla strike teams, shit like that. Leave the hard stuff to us, the ones with the impossible odds. We'll get through an' we'll get out, simple as that."

She tapped her lip contemplatively, her eyes shifting between us. She looked back down at her papers, shuffling them until she found the one she wanted. "All right, you think you're so good. Demon and Vulture spent almost a year on this one and still didn't get close enough to make a difference." I nodded as Logan raised an eyebrow. "We think we have a double agent working out of Beijing. We have a research and development facility there, but every time they make any headway or new discoveries, the Chinese throw patents on them before we can even get through the process. I want you two to go, find out who it is and take him or her out."

"Consider it done, sir," Logan said with a smirk.

"Fine. I'll have the complete files, including the last reports Demon and Vulture gave us when they came back, sent to your room by oh-six-hundred tomorrow." She stood up and we followed suit, standing at attention. "I hope you're as good as you say you are. Dismissed."

We left her office and picked up our day shadows as we started down the hall right on cue. Davison was still hell bent on getting under Logan's skin and started in on him right away. "So, the Colonel give you something to do or is she sticking you back in your kennel?" Logan clenched his jaw, but didn't rise to the bait. That didn't stop Davison, though. "What's the matter, old man? Think we don't know about you? How the two of you rut like animals all night, every night?" He whistled and shook his head. "Makes for quite a show, let me tell you." He stopped, turned around and leaned in close to Logan, whispering conspiratorially. "Tell me something, Wolverine. Has she always screamed like that or are those animal sounds another one of her mutations?"

Even as Logan started growling dangerously, I simply snapped. I kicked him hard in the gut with my booted foot and his breath went out of him in a rush. Logan then grabbed him and pinned him to the wall, two of his claws buried in the concrete on either side of his neck. "Shut the hell up, asshole," he snarled, "or you'll be drownin' in your own blood before ya can scream."

I was vaguely aware of Grant yelling for us to stand down, his sidearm pointed at my chest, but my vision was already swimming in scarlet and blood was rushing through my ears. I lashed out behind me absently with my left hand and my claws opened his forearm clear to the bone. "Stay out of this, Grant," I hissed, "this isn't your fight." I turned my attention back to Davison.

"…kill me now, you'll be tossed in a hole so deep it'll take you a year to climb out." He said.

"Do I look like I give a fuck?" Logan answered, still growling low in his chest.

"Actually, you don't," Davison said with a cocky grin. "We got tapes of you since you got out of sensory dep. Me and Grant got a bet that she's faking." Logan grabbed the front of his shirt and gave him a hard shake, nicking the side of his neck with one of his claws. "What's the matter Wolverine? Afraid of what might happen if she got some from a real man?"

I shot my left hand out and grabbed his crotch, and I squeezed his balls just hard enough to make him squeak. Wolverine looked down, then back at me with a quirked eyebrow and I just smiled as I stepped forward. "What, like you?" I asked and squeezed a little harder. "I'd rip your dick off, but from what I can tell you'd never know the difference."

I heard the sound of booted feet running our way and a heartbeat later we were flanked by a dozen guards, all of whom cocked their weapons as they took position. "Wolverine! Hellcat! Stand down or we will shoot you!"

I shook my head, but didn't let go. "What, are you all stupid? You don't shoot Wolverine, it'll only piss him off."

"But it'll kill you just fine," Said a voice from the back and the Director moved through the ranks to stand just behind the men kneeling in the front. "Stand down, both of you, or Hellcat will be next in the vivisection lab. We'll see if she comes back with her vital organs laying on the floor, shall we?" Both of us snapped our heads to glare at him even as I slowly released Davison and Wolverine smoothly slid his claws away. Davison slid to the floor, clutching himself and whimpering, while Grant simply held his ruined arm to his chest in an attempt to stanch the blood. Wolverine and I cautiously raised our hands and stepped away from our day guards. "Very good." The Director gave the guards a hand signal and six of them separated from the rest to restrain us. "It's my understanding that Colonel Sidowski has given you an assignment. Out of deference for the fact that you'll need time to prepare, we'll only keep you in sensory dep for three days." He looked at the guards and gave them a curt nod. "Take them away."

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**AN:** My apologies for not updating sooner, but it's become something of a miracle for me to be able to maintain a connection long enough to download my email, much less update the story! So if my updates are ever late, that would be why...sigh...

Anyway, Special thanks to Zac, Turiel Tincdaniel and DBK(tm), the best beta readers ever! And an extra shout out to DBK, who (from what i understand) can't seem to stop reading my stories once he starts...thanks sweetie! Super Special thanks to everyone who's reading, since that means there's SOMEONE out there paying attention...but, as always, the Biggest Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were TnTornado, theNightEnchantress and Nataku's Wrath...:) Mr. Tornado: Congrats on being the first reviewer! But you'll have to just keep reading to find out if the ending's happy or not, i'm not telling (publicly, at least!)...NW: Sorry i didn't have a detailed flashback scene for ya, but i did PM you with some of your answers...and never hesitate to ask if something's slipped your mind! As for Sabretooth, well...(and this bit here is for everyone!)...his current whereabouts are unknown...but darn it if the muse hasn't given me an idea, so it looks like this saga isn't going to end here:)

**Now, for those of you not familiar with this tradition...if i receive even one review from someone who's never reviewed before, i'll post a new chapter RIGHT AWAY...otherwise, it's usually 3-4 days for updates...i can do this because i don't post a single chapter until the entire story is finished...so, since the story's here, you can be assured that it's done...:) You want a new chapter now? Just hit that little button that says "go", say hello or something and i'll update as soon as i get it!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Special Note:** Many thanks to **Kardue'sai'Malloc** for reviewing...:) As promised, here's the update...:)

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Chapter 3

(Scott)

I decided I was going crazy when I kept looking for Logan to ask how Gamma team was progressing. I never thought I'd not only get used to him being around, but that I'd expect him to be there. Sure, we called a truce all those years ago, but we still sniped at each other all the time. It took me years to figure out what it was I didn't like about him and Jean had only been a part of that. To me, he seemed undisciplined, uneducated; in a nutshell, he was a thug. When his memories started coming back and we found out he was fluent in damn near every language currently spoken, not to mention an expert in several different martial arts forms, it took me by surprise. It wasn't until that truce that I figured him out. His thuggish persona was just that, a persona, a carefully crafted character meant to make people underestimate him. I don't think I'll ever consider him a bosom buddy, but his absence wasn't as comforting as I once thought it would be.

We received a message from Rogue asking about Evie's powers. She says that dreaming visions are always true, but awake visions aren't and she wanted to know why. Since Evie's convinced the Professor knows everything about everything, she insisted Rogue send the message. Charles was just as stumped as the rest of us, but promised to look into it and give them an answer as soon as he had one. I really miss all of them, especially Sam and Ororo. But I understand that they have a promise to keep and an obligation to Evie. I just hope this whole thing will be over soon so life can get back to normal around here, stinky cigars and all.

We had another rescue mission a little over a month after the two of them left, a massive flood in China. We saved the people who could be saved, but the crop damage looked pretty bad. We left Warren, Sage and a girl named Casey who could control plant growth behind to help them out. She said she could probably restore most of their crops in about two weeks, so she cut her own summer vacation short to help them. Kyro wanted to stay too, but we needed him back at the mansion. You know, just in case. He's the only one left who can fight without mercy if it's needed. I don't think I'll ever learn that trick, personally.

Never thought I'd miss Logan, but I do.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Sam)

A few weeks after we got to the safe house, I started Evie sculpting in clay. She'd never shown any interest in it before, but after the first couple of weeks she would come down to the basement to watch me work and sometimes played with the scraps. I finally sat her down with a lump of her own and showed her how to punch it to get any hidden bubbles out. She really liked that part and I can understand why. Her parents are far away, doing God only knows what, and she can't talk to them or see them and it's breaking her little heart. So, she has the clay to take her frustration out on and, for now at least, it seems to be working.

Once she had her clay beaten down (that's really the only way to describe what she did to it, I swear), I told her to just look at the clay and make whatever she could see in it. I hadn't thought about what I said when I told her that. Believe me or not, but her psychometry had completely slipped my mind. So she put her hands on the clay and closed her eyes for a few minutes, and I went back to the vase I'd just taken out of the kiln to do the final glazing on it. Once I had it safely tucked away to dry, I turned back to her and she was shaping and molding her clay into what appeared to be a horse. I asked her how she came up with that and she just shrugged and said "Horses used to live there, where this clay came from, and this one liked to graze by the river". Maybe all artists have a touch of psychometry. Not enough to be considered a power, but every sculptor I know believes that his or her medium of choice speaks to them in some way. It's an interesting question, if nothing else.

We saw the X-Men on the news the other day, a rescue mission in China. Ororo was terribly upset that she hadn't been there to help, but then she looked over at that precious little girl painting her horse and sighed. This whole situation isn't easy on any of us, but Marie and I made a promise and Ororo would never ask me to break that promise. I did tell her that if she truly wanted to return to the mansion for the duration, that it would be all right with me, but she said no. As much as she wanted to go back, she was also afraid that if she left us, something would happen here and she would regret not being here to help.

We're all a little sad being away from the school, but none more than Evie. I hope Angela and Logan know what they're doing.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_One month, two weeks, three days, six hours and eleven minutes since mom and dad sent me away._

_Sam's letting me make stuff with some of his clay. He said that I should let the clay tell me what to make, so I touched it and looked in it and I made what I could see. My first piece was this really pretty horse named Gadget, who was brown all over except for one white foot and a white spot on his forehead. Another bit of clay showed me a crane, but I couldn't get the legs skinny enough. So Sam helped me make it so we could put wooden legs on it when it was done. The one I'm working on now is a fish. He was wondering the other day what would happen if he got me clay that wasn't from the ground, if I would make one of the people who made the clay or the building it was made in. I don't know, but it would sure be neat to try._

_I had a dream about mom and dad, but there wasn't much to see. They were somewhere far away with people who look kind of like Uncle Kyro, but not exactly the same. I know Uncle Kyro is from Japan, so maybe these people were from Korea like Hea and Jung, or maybe China, where the X-Men went not that long ago. But all I could see was them walking down a road with all these people everywhere and they were in regular clothes, taking pictures and being all snuggly like they were on vacation or something. But the way dad kept looking around, I know they didn't go on vacation. I think they have a mission, but if they don't live in the mansion anymore, who are they on a mission for?_

_I tried to see them with their necklaces a couple weeks ago, but all I got was darkness. I could hear them, but I couldn't see them. I got the feeling they were put there on purpose, but I don't know why mom or dad would want to be somewhere so dark. They both have that super eyesight thing and I know they wouldn't like it if they couldn't see. I'll have to ask them about it when we all go back home._

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Logan)

Three days, three months, three _years._ The Director said three days, but it felt like longer, it always does. It's amazing that I got all of my memories back, but there was still so much missing. Sensory dep was definitely not one of the things that came back and I know why. It's hell, plain and simple. Only thing that might be worse for us is sensory overload, but I am _not_ going to point that out to him.

They brought me out first this time, tossed me naked into our room and I sat there shaking for a little while once I woke up. I wasn't cold, wasn't scared, I was _angry_ and I had to fight back that animal. It gets harder to do every time, which I think is why they liked doing it to us so much. I fell back on the one thing that always worked before, meditation. I pulled on a pair of pants, knelt down in the middle of the bed and closed my eyes. I managed to get myself calm enough to start drifting when the door crashed open. My eyes flew open as two men tossed Angela inside, naked, then slammed the door behind them. I could still hear them laughing as they walked away. I was off the bed and at her side in a heartbeat and the anger boiled back up when I saw her.

Her face, arms and torso were covered with bruises, some so fresh they had to have been done out in the hall near our room, others fading as I looked at them. She had a nasty cut over her left eye and her bottom lip was split, though it looked to be more than half-healed. Her fingers were covered with blood, both her own and that of others, but the only visible injuries were on her wrists. There was also dried blood on her thighs and that more than anything took my anger from red to white-hot. I picked her up carefully and laid her down on the bed, propping her head up with both pillows. I kissed her forehead, whispering "I'll kill 'em for this, darlin'." I smoothed her hair briefly before turning back to the door, popping my claws. I heard her moan behind me, so I paused.

"Logan, don't," She murmured. "It's not what you think." Her voice sounded thick, so it came out like "snotwatchoosink", but I understood her just fine.

I rushed back to the bed, my claws sliding away. "What'd they do to you?"

She laughed weakly, but it ended in a cough. "You should see the other guy." I frowned at her cough, tried to check her condition, but she waved me away. "I'm ok. Kicked in the gut a few times, but I think I can hold on."

"Shh, don't try to talk, just rest. I'll take care of 'em."

"Don't have to, lover. I already did."

There was a metal pitcher full of water on our little table and I went over and poured her a cup. She took it from me and sipped it gratefully before handing it to me and falling back into the pillows. I wet the end of a towel and did my best to carefully wipe the blood off of her while she told me the story.

They put her in sensory dep as promised, but after two days – she wasn't exactly sure - someone came in and grabbed her. They'd left the lights on in the hallway outside as bright as they would go, which after that long in the dark with eyes like ours is beyond painful. Once her vision righted itself, she saw that it was Davison and one of our night shadows, Miller, who had grabbed her from her cell. By then, they'd taken her to a room that was more or less bare except for an examination table and a pair of metal chairs. However, being human and male, the both of them were fooled by their eyes. Considering that my wife is only five foot one inch tall and appears to weigh about a hundred pounds soaking wet, well…it wasn't too hard for me to imagine what happened next.

She had allowed herself to remain limp from the moment they grabbed her until she saw what her battleground was like. They were joking and talking about her like she wasn't there, making bets about who would make her scream the loudest, all the kinds of things that men who have to prove how manly they are say to each other. She waited until they hefted her onto the table to strike. She swiped her claws across the face of Miller on her left even as she brought her foot around and kicked Davison in the groin. He went down, whimpering like a baby as Miller tried to get his sidearm out of its holster. Angela kicked him in the face again, putting him out. She had just leapt to the other side of the table to concentrate on Davison again when the door burst open and she was hit with a trank dart.

Colonel Sidowski had come in just after that and had Angela taken to the regular infirmary to recover from the trank under guard. Miller and Davison were removed from their posts and reassigned, but that didn't stop them from trying to get back at Angela for humiliating them. So, about three hours ago, they'd somehow managed to trade places with the men who were supposed to bring her back to our room, probably through some kind of bribery. They'd picked her up, dragged her to another near-empty room and tried to make good on their former threat. But this time, they came prepared.

The first thing they did was bind her hands behind her back with some kind of wire, but not her feet. This confused her until she realized they didn't know she had claws on her feet too. They also made sure the wire was wrapped around a bare pipe that ran up one corner of the room. She figured they'd just do what they were gonna do and leave her there, but she was wrong. One thing that most people don't know about her claws is exactly how much like cat's claws they really are. They grow at about the same rate as fingernails, but if she doesn't keep them trimmed they can become painful. However, also like a cat, if you press on the pad of any of her fingertips, her claws will come out involuntarily, just like if you press in the middle of a cat's paw. So, once Davison had her hands bound tight enough that she couldn't easily wriggle free, both he and Miller proceeded to de-claw my woman.

What they hadn't counted on was her reaction to that. I'd only seen it once, back in the Alkali Lake days, when she'd gotten a claw snagged in the shirt of a guy she was fighting on a rooftop and was just a split second too slow to get it out before he started to fall over the side. In the end, she just yanked her hand away, ripping the claw out and once she was done cursing, she ripped into the guy's partner like it was all his fault. Didn't leave me much to do, but it was a thing of wonder to behold. Now she had Miller and Davison pulling her claws out one by one and her rage only grew with each one until she just didn't care what happened to her anymore.

She brought her head back as hard as she could and managed to hit Davison square in the nose, breaking it on impact and knocking him out. As he fell back, Miller backhanded her, but that put his hand within biting distance. She latched on and didn't let go, biting hard enough to draw blood. Miller continued hitting her with the pliers he'd been using to pull out her claws until she finally managed to bite all the way through the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. He'd jerked his hand away and punched her in the mouth, but what he hadn't known was that during the struggle, she'd managed to loosen the wire binding her hands enough wriggle out, the blood that slicked her fingers a big help there. Miller tried to hit her with the pliers again, but she grabbed his hand as he swung and disarmed him neatly, smashing them into the center of his forehead. He went down like a sack of rocks and she proceeded to kick him in the face with her claws out until there was precious little face left to see.

"…I guess Colonel Sidowski finally figured out I was missing – wasn't supposed to be released for another couple of hours – and as soon as she heard who'd picked me up she had one of the telepaths scan around til they found us."

"What'd she do?" I asked as I moved to clean the blood from her thighs. It all smelled like hers, but there was no scent of semen on them or man other than me. Lucky for them.

"Well, I made good on my promise to Davison." She replied, then chuckled. "I was right – he'll never notice it's missing."

I couldn't help but join her in laughing. "An' that's when the Colonel came in?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I thought I was done for, Logan, I really did. She looked fit to kill someone, but it turns out it wasn't me. She had a couple guys take those assholes to the infirmary, but I'm not sure how alive they still are and the other two brought me back here."

"Looks like they had a little fun with ya on the way."

"'Course they did. I took out two of their buddies while I was naked with my hands tied behind my back."

"What'd the Colonel say to you?"

"Nothing yet, just ordered me brought back here. Once the adrenaline wore off, the last of that damn trank kicked back in and they tossed me in here."

"Yeah well, I'm sure we'll hear 'bout it tomorrow." She nodded and I put the towel aside, then reached for a shirt and pants for her. "Here, don't want ya gettin' cold."

She gently pushed my hand aside and pulled me down next to her. "Never happen. I have you." She snuggled into me and I kissed the top of her head, and just for a second, it was like we were back at the mansion. I stroked her back with my thumb in that way that always makes her shiver and smiled when she did so. A little while later, she sighed and looked up at me. "Logan, promise me that no matter what happens, you'll always be Logan and I'll always be Angela when we're alone."

I looked at her curiously. "Who else would we be?"

"You know."

I nodded. I did know, could never forget. We'd only been back about a month and a half and already, the old habits were coming back. Kill or be killed. Obey or be punished. Show no mercy. It was like the years we spent at the mansion never happened, that we'd never gotten away from all of this and had simply been on a really long leave of absence. We were people, not much different from other people, except for this bad thing we have inside us that's always begging, howling, _screaming_ to be let out and now we were in a place where it wasn't only expected to run free, it was desirable that it do so. Yeah, I really did know what she meant.

"Logan?"

"Yeah, Angela. I promise."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

She didn't get much sleep that night, due the pain of her claws growing back. She'd told me before that of all things that had ever happened to her, all the wounds she'd healed, her claws regrowing was the worst. It also happened to take the longest, almost nine hours. I rubbed my hands and wondered if I'd ever lost a claw like that, ever had one pulled out, but I didn't think so. I did still have some very curious blank spots in my memory, but they were all bookended by an event that threw me into a feral state, followed by something that brought me out, so it did make a bit of sense. What bothered me was how many times it had happened, more than I could count through the years. Some of them seemed to be a fairly short period of time, a few hours or days, but others stretched on for weeks (Rose? Did I ever say how sorry I was?). But one constant through it all was that people around me always ended up hurt or dead, Angela being no exception.

In fact, her claws were still regrowing when four armed guards pounded on our door at oh-six-hundred, busting in before we had a chance to open it ourselves. They ordered us to get dressed, but none of them even made a show of turning away to give Angela a bit of privacy to do so. I simply stood in front of her while she pulled on a pair of pants and a tank top, not bothering to put on more than the pants I was already wearing until she was done. Once we were finished, they flanked us on all sides and marched us directly to the Colonel's office.

"Sit," She ordered as soon as we were shoved inside and we obeyed. Her face was a mask of barely controlled anger, her hands clenched so hard in front of her that they were shaking. She dove right in without waiting. "Hellcat, what the fuck is your problem?"

"I'm sure I don't understand the question, sir," She replied, her fingers curled like she wanted to slide her claws out but in too much pain to do so. "If the Colonel is telling me I can't defend myself from would-be rapists, then perhaps she should send me to vivisection right now."

Sidowski slammed her fist into her desk and stood up, eyes blazing. "_You killed two of my best men!"_ She shouted, flecks of saliva flying from her lips. "I should have you sent to vivisection for it!"

"With all due respect, Colonel, you left out 'while I was naked with my hands tied behind my back'. Sir." She stood up slowly, leaned on the edge of the desk, her face just inches from the Colonel's, and held up one of her hands. "They fucking _de-clawed_ me. Davison's been making cracks for weeks about getting a piece of me. I am not a dumb animal, Colonel, regardless of what makes you sleep better at night." She straightened up and crossed her arms. "Oh, he got a piece of me all right, just not the piece he wanted."

"You are one arrogant little bitch, you know that?" The Colonel sat back down and Angela followed suit. "As it stands, the Director says I _can't_ send you to vivisection. I can't even send you back to sensory dep."

"Then why the hell are we here, sir?" I asked.

"Against my advisement, the Director has ordered the two of you be reassigned to a better room with no surveillance and that you are no longer to be kept under guard. He seems to think that your behavior proves that you're back with the program and there's no need to treat you like prisoners anymore."

I sat back in my chair, secretly thrilled. Without our constant shadows, we'd be able to plan things a bit better for when the time came for us to get the fuck out of there again. I'm sure the telepaths – especially Phoenix – knew about that plan and had told both the Director and the Colonel everything, but at the moment they were playing like they didn't know. "So what the fuck's up with those goons outside, sir?"

"Those 'goons' are my personal bodyguard and no matter what the Director says, I will not allow the two of you within ten feet of me without them."

I snorted as Angela gave a little chuckle. "Again, with all due respect sir, if we wanted you dead, you would be and there's exactly jack and shit they could do about it. So the fact that you're still breathing should tell you something."

"Is that a threat?"

"It's a fact." Angela stood up and the Colonel eyed her warily. "Now, if that's all you have for us Colonel, Wolverine and I do have a mission we need to prepare for."

Sidowski glared at her, but waved her hand. "Go, dismissed. But if I hear about anymore attacks…"

I cut her off as I stood. "If they keep their mitts offa us, we'll leave 'em alone, simple as that. Sir." She glared at us one more time, then picked up a file folder and opened it in a clear sign of dismissal. We left the office and the guards immediately surrounded us again. Instead of the tiny room we'd been in since the beginning, they took us to a room one level up. We found out later the human soldiers called it "Freaktown", which was their way of saying mutant barracks. The room was a little better, less damp and with a small attached bathroom that contained a rust-stained porcelain sink, an equally stained toilet and a shower stall barely big enough for me. The locker in the corner was a little bigger and it had_ two_ chairs sitting at the rickety table.

Angela looked around, a bitter little smile on her face. "Oh yeah, this is _much_ better, really." She flopped down on the bed and covered her face with her forearm. "Wake me next year, ok?"

I chuckled. "Sure thing, darlin'." I stepped into the small bathroom and washed my face, noticing right away that the hot water didn't work very well. Then again, why waste something like that on a fucking mutie, right? I dried off with a towel that felt more like thirty grit sandpaper and went back into the main room just as someone knocked on the door. I scowled and jerked it open just as a little Oriental guy about the same size as Angela raised his fist to knock again. "What?" I growled.

"Oh! Gosh, you scared me!" He said with no trace of an accent. "I'm Dr. Daniel Lee, I'm here to examine Hellcat and make sure she's healing all right."

My scowl deepened, but he didn't smell like he was lying. I jerked my head and moved out of the way and he came in. "She's tryin' to sleep."

"Yeah, 'trying' being the operative word in that sentence." She sat up and glared at the doctor. "Haven't you guys poked and prodded me enough for a lifetime?"

"Now Hellcat, you know we have to make sure you're in peak condition," He said as he crossed the room. "I've been through your file, both of you. You're pretty legendary for being bad patients."

"Wouldn't you be?" I said with a snort. "People generally don't like bein' cut open an' made into weapons, bub."

"Yes well, I can see where that might color your judgment a bit." I shook my head in disbelief while Angela simply stared. "Now then, please lift your shirt so I can get a look at those bruises." She frowned, but did as he asked. Most of them were already gone, though she still had some tenderness on the right side. He also inspected her fingers and asked how the claws were coming along. Once he was satisfied, he stepped back and she curled back up. "Wolverine, may I talk to you in the hall for a moment?" I raised an eyebrow at him. He wasn't like any of the other doctors or scientists I remembered from before. He was almost…well, nice is the only way to put it. I breathed in deep through my nose, but he smelled perfectly human. After a moment, I shrugged and followed him outside. "I'm going to be perfectly blunt, Wolverine," he began, looking around, "I'm new here and I've never encountered anyone with healing factors like yours and hers in my work."

"An' what would that be?" I asked, crossing my arms.

"I'm an immunologist. At least I was, before…well, that's not important." He picked at an imaginary piece of lint on his sleeve and went on. "Anyway, I've been through all of your old mission files as well as the current ones on the serum they derived from your DNA. It's fascinating, really, but there's one thing that hasn't been well-explored yet."

"Look, you people already got one clone o' me runnin' 'round somewhere, I ain't helpin' ya make another one."

His eyes widened in shock, "You know about her?"

I nodded. "Yep. Found out 'bout it in some o' the files we stole over the years." I narrowed my eyes and leaned into him. "Can't say I'm happy 'bout it. She's just a fuckin' kid, but you'll make a weapon o' her just the same. It's disgustin'."

"I assure you, I had nothing to do with that project and for the record, I don't condone it. Or Phoenix, for that matter." He straightened up to his full height of about five feet three inches. "No, the project I want you and possibly your wife for is much different."

"What is it?"

"During your previous time with Weapon X, a man named Dr. Cornelius had taken several blood and tissue samples from you. The notes that survived your escape indicate that he believed there was something in your white blood cells that facilitate the healing factor. I have studied blood samples from all the current operatives and it seems he was correct in that they do have certain…anomalies that do not occur in humans."

"We're mutants, doctor. What do you expect?"

"Please Wolverine, let me finish." He pulled a PDA out of his pocket and switched it on. "It is true that the white blood cells in all of you are markedly different, but your white blood cells – and to a small degree Hellcat's as well – are much different than those of your comrades." He pulled up a file and handed the device to me. It was the list of healing factor classifications that we'd found in the Hudson Bay files. "Now, this is the way you were all classified before, based on how quickly you healed and your immunities. As I understand it, you're a nine while your wife was considered a four point nine."

"Yeah, cuz she don't heal that fast, but she also don't stay dead, so what?"

"Well, that was a very long time ago, twenty-five years or more, and we have made many discoveries in just the past five years that have rendered this list more or less obsolete." He took the PDA back and called up another file. "This is the new classification list, still one through ten, still based on speed of healing as well as immunities, but it takes other things into consideration as well."

"Like what?"

"Wolverine, whether they realize it or not, many of your fellow ferals are not going to last as long as you and your wife. Adamantium is a highly toxic metal. Normal humans that are exposed to it risk suffering the same effects they would experience if exposed to high amounts of mercury, for example, only much worse. It has only been in the past five years that we've realized adamantium reduces the effectiveness of the healing factor."

My eyes widened slightly. "By how much?"

"We don't know. But it never occurred to anyone that perhaps some of the operatives may not be immune to adamantium poisoning. Over the past few years, we have noticed a certain amount of…mental degeneration amongst the operatives. Nothing that could be deemed as crippling at this point, but a certain amount of impaired judgment has been recorded."

I looked down, frowning. It would certainly explain Sabretooth, but if his healing factor was supposed to better than mine…"How does someone's healin' factor accordin' to that list o' yours effect the poisoning?"

"That's why I wanted to talk to you. It doesn't matter where you fall on the list. You could have a factor ten and still be affected. On the other hand, someone with a factor one could have no poisoning effects at all. As it stands, it seems only you, your wife and your clone are unaffected. We have a few subjects that have recently undergone the bonding at another facility, but we won't know how they're affected for years."

"An' you're sayin' it's somethin' in my white blood cells that's different? Mine an' An…Hellcat's?"

"So far as we can tell. We've tried to counteract the effects by giving the serum that was created to other operatives, but in an ironic twist we didn't expect, their healing factors have caused them to reject it."

"An' this is what this Cornelius was workin' on?"

"No, actually. He looked at your blood as a panacea, the universal serum that could cure all disease. I believe he was on to something, but naturally the people around here are not interested in such things. However, if I were to tell them I was interested in studying you and your wife in an attempt to do away with the poisoning…"

I nodded. "You could look into Cornelius' work an' see if he was right." I leaned against the wall and frowned. Could this guy be right? Could something _good_ actually come of all this? "Do ya really think ya can fix the poisoning?"

"Truthfully? No, I don't. The amount of metal they put into all of you is staggering and the fact that they're already showing signs of poisoning is telling. Sure, it'll take them twenty or thirty years for it to kill them, whereas a normal human would be dead in weeks, but the damage is done. Yes, their white blood cells are different from mine, but not nearly as different as yours." He leaned in and lowered his voice. "But no one needs to know about that, do they?"

"No doc, I guess they don't." I closed my eyes and thought about people I'd known through the years who were eaten alive by cancer, crippled then killed by different diseases…hell, all the people out there who had the exact opposite of me with immune system disorders like AIDS and lupus. I was the killer that could save the world. I looked at the doctor and nodded. "All right, I'll do it. Can't speak for my wife, but she'll give ya an answer soon enough." I pushed away from the wall and gave him a hard look. "But understand one thing. If I find out you're usin' this as some way to make another weapon outta me, I'll gut ya myself."

He actually looked offended. "Wolverine…Logan…I am a doctor, a healer. What happened to you and your wife, the others, it appalls me. Believe me when I say that I was brought into this as willingly as you were." He shoved his PDA back into his pocket and straightened his lab coat. "But that is a story for another time. Good day."

He walked away, his back straight, and I watched him go. So he wasn't brought here of his own free will either? It made me wonder if everyone here was some kind of hostage, that the Director had something on everyone. I went back into the room and saw that Angela had managed to fall asleep. I stretched out next to her and she rolled over, snuggling into me. The plot thickened and I didn't know what that meant for us.

* * *

**AN:** For the record, the theory of using Logan's healing factor to create a panacea was explored in the prose novelization of Barry Windsor Smith's "Wolverine: Weapon X" comics, recently reprinted in a hardcover graphic novel (prose novel by Marc Cerasini)...i know a few other writers on here have explored this concept as well, so i wanted to make it known that my info came from the "Weapon X" novel an nowhere else...:) Special thanks to Zac, Turiel Tincdaniel and DBK(tm) who is the best beta reading team on the planet...Extra Special thanks for DBK specifically, since his begging is so cute and pathetic that it inspires me to keep writing even when i don't much feel like it...:) Super Special thanks to my readers, for sticking with me through this epic story...and Super Swanky Special thanks to everyone who's reviewed so far, though the aforementioned Kardue'sai'Malloc is the only reviewer i have for chapter 2 so far...but it hasn't been up very long, so there's still time...:)

**Now that you all have PROOF that i'll post a new chapter for a new reviewer, give it a go! Heck, you could end up getting this whole story in about three weeks as opposed to almost two months:) Just click the little "go" button, say hello or something and poof! Update for you:)**


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

(Rogue)

Remy and I took Evie into town for some shopping. It was weird, having to wear those stupid ball caps, but we didn't want to chance that the Weapon X people would have that Phoenix looking for us. I wasn't completely sure, but from what the Professor had told us before, if Jean's powers had been used fully, she could have found anyone anywhere without Cerebro. I don't really understand how that works, but since Phoenix is a clone of her without all the good influence of the Professor, teaching her how to control it, well…it just wasn't a chance we wanted to take.

Evie was just thrilled to be out of the house I think. Our plan was just to go to the grocery store, then stop at the mall for some new clothes. None of us had brought much with us and I was getting mortally tired of wearing the same five outfits. Angela had done well by us, the package that MacKenzie woman had given us filled with money. She must have contacted her friend Ricky ages before we actually left and told him what to do, otherwise there was no explanation for how Erin had gotten to us so quickly. Anyway, once we were out, it seemed cruel to make Evie go back home so soon, so we took her for ice cream and to the park to play for a while. She'd already been told to tell no one she was a mutant, not because of the old problems but the new.

We finally got back home just before dinner and Sam and Storm were fit to be tied. We apologized profusely and they forgave us fast enough when they saw how happy Evie was. It was the first time that she'd really and truly smiled since we left the mansion, so they couldn't stay mad at us forever.

Damn, I miss Logan so much. I lost my family once when I became a mutant. I didn't want to lose this one too.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Hank)

The rumor mill started in earnest shortly before the beginning of the school year. With a mere handful of students running around the mansion, and those mostly the ones with designs to join the X-Men upon graduation, there wasn't much variation in the stories. But the children still spoke with the rest of their friends via email, cell phone and on rare occasions, the normal post. Any way we looked at it, we had a problem on our hands.

The most popular theory being bandied about was the one that was closest to the "truth" – at least, the truth as Logan and Angela know it – that Blackbird Three had gone down some unspecified amount of time after Sam and Storm left with Evie, killing the three of them. Blaming the men and women who invaded the mansion for their deaths, Logan and Angela had gone in pursuit of the soldiers and were never coming back. What astonished us was how readily they accepted the story of Rogue and Remy being sent on an extended assignment for the Professor to Louisiana and would not be back for the school year. Of course, this rumor had a grain of truth to it, so it was the one that was most believed.

Naturally, other theories were readily available for those so inclined to seek them out. I was aware of at least two others, both of which were so wildly unlikely that it made me laugh to think on them for too long. My favorite was the one where the invading force had a special device that activated control chips embedded in Logan and Angela, which caused them to go crazy and that's why Evie, Sam and Ororo were dead. How else to explain the grave markers in the garden and the absence of our favorite feral mutants? Less popular but no less amusing was the story of Logan coming across the dismembered bodies of his daughter and his lover, a completely enraged Sabretooth hunched over the corpses, having used the invading force as a cover to exact revenge on Wolverine for his defeat at Liberty Island. We tried our best to quash the rumors, but children are children and they will talk.

Fortunately for us, this was one time where Miss Lee managed to keep her own gossiping nature in check. She knew it could be dangerous, if not fatal, to Logan and his family if any part of their plan were to be leaked to the wrong people. But of all the people on the faculty, including Charles, why she chose me as the one person to confide in will remain a mystery for the ages. She'd come to the infirmary after an especially grueling Danger Room session due to some bruised ribs and as soon as everyone else had been treated for their own bumps and bruises, she approached me. "Dr. McCoy? Can I talk to you for a minute?"

"Of course, Jubilation, but please call me Hank," I replied with a smile. "After all, we are team mates and have been for some time."

"Yeah, I know. But old habits die hard, you know?"

I nodded. "Yes, I do." I took her gently by the elbow and led her into my office. "Would you like some tea?"

"Uh, sure Dr. Mc…Hank." She smiled as she sat down and I busied myself with the kettle. "So umm…how's it going?"

I turned and gave her a steaming cup before settling in with my own. "Jubilation, I know you're not here to make small talk, so why don't you just tell me what's on your mind?"

She sighed and looked down at her tea, stirring it for a moment. "I miss Wolvie."

Ah, so that is what prompted this visit. "I know, my dear, but trust me when I tell you that they are perfectly fine and can take care of themselves."

"I know, D…Hank. But I think about him and Angela being back there with those monsters and I worry that they'll never come back again."

I peered at her closely, taking in her dejected pose and set my cup aside. "You have to understand that the situation is just not that simple. They know what they are doing and they went with Charles' blessing." I sat back and took a sip of my tea. "Logan and Angela are the most resilient people I have ever met. If anyone can come back from that place hale and whole, it will be those two."

"I just don't understand why they couldn't keep doing things the way they did before! I mean, they took out tons of Weapon X people and never went back, so what made this time so special?"

I let out a sigh and wracked my brain for a way to explain this. The only people who were privy to this information were myself, Charles and obviously Logan and Angela – except they didn't know they knew. Now for a bit of verbal tap dancing, "Jubilation, there are some things that simply cannot be taken care of from the outside. For example, you can hit a Sentinel with a plasma burst, but you can only hit it once. After that, it will employ countermeasures that will repulse most if not all of the power behind your bursts, rendering them more or less useless. However, as long as Kitty is in a position to do so, she can simply phase into the same Sentinel and tear apart its internal matrix. Wolverine can cut through and do the same thing."

"So what you're saying is, they went back because they didn't see any other way to do this? Cuz the way they talk about that Weapon X thing, it sounds like a bunch of old guys who torture mutants for funsies. How do we know they aren't doing that to them right now?"

I resisted the urge to beat my head against the steel wall next to me. "That organization, much like any other, has one person who is responsible for all of the decisions. Until that person is taken care of, it will not die. I am certain they knew the possible repercussions of returning to them of their own free will, that there would be certain…punishments meted out for their audacity at escaping all those years ago. But if I know the two of them at all, they will simply add those punishments to the list of crimes for which those people are responsible." I leaned forward and took one of her hands. "Please, trust them to do what they need to do. They will come back to us someday. After all, Logan gave his word."

She nodded in agreement. "And we all know he doesn't break his promises."

"Precisely." I looked at the clock on my desk and patted her hand. "Now, I have a biology lab to prepare for the first day of school and I believe you have your own lesson plans to finish."

She rolled her eyes, but smiled anyway. "Yeah I do. Thanks Hank, I appreciate it." She stood and left my office, but I sat back in my chair. Her fears were not misplaced, but that was not something I was willing to discuss with her. I had to believe that Logan and Angela were strong enough to make it through this ordeal; anything else was simply not an option. But there were days where I worried about them as much as anyone else.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_One month, three weeks, four days and nine hours since mom and dad sent me away._

_Uncle Atlas is still teaching me how to sculpt. He says that if I keep doing as well as I am, I'll be able to try the potter's wheel pretty soon. That seems pretty cool, making bowls and vases and stuff. I never really got into much art before, but it feels really good to punch the clay, mostly because I think punching something else might hurt my hand. Aunt 'Roro was teasing the other day and said that my room's starting to look like Noah's Ark with all the animals I've made. I can't help it if clay comes from nature and all I can see in it is animals. But Uncle Atlas says that's ok. When I do stuff on the wheel, he says, I can paint the animals I see on the outside. Maybe someday I can be the world's youngest mutant artist. How cool is that?_

_Aunt Marie gave me a present a little while ago, a picture of mom and dad by some waterfall. They looked really happy, like it was the best day ever for them. She said it's from when they were younger, but they look just the same as I remember them. I was scared that maybe I was forgetting what they really looked like and that's why I thought that, but Aunt Marie told me it was cuz of their mutation. I know I'm still just a little kid, but I hope I get that mutation. Being young and pretty like mom forever would be really neat and stuff. I think I could do without the claws though, cuz they look like they hurt. Well, dad's look like they hurt, mom's look like cat claws and if they don't hurt cats or mom, they probably wouldn't hurt me._

_I had that same dream about mom and dad again, where they look like they're on vacation in Japan or something. I didn't see anything else though, so I wonder if they're gonna do something bad where they are. Uncle Remy says that mom and dad would never do something bad unless it was to stop something bad, so maybe that's what they're doing. Maybe there's a bomb and they have to get rid of it. Or maybe the bad men went to another school and tried to take a little girl away. Or maybe they really are on vacation. No, that's not right. They'd never go on vacation without me._

_Oh, I gotta go. Aunt Marie says I have to learn more math today. My birthday is in a couple of months, you know. I'll be ten and I know that after I turn twelve, then Aunt Marie isn't my teacher anymore, I get to have a bunch of teachers. So mom and dad have to come back and get me before I turn twelve. That's over two years away and if they don't come for me by then, I'll just have to figure out a way to find them myself._

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Angela)

We took a little over a week to plan the op in Beijing. The schematics for the actual research facility were pretty cut and dried, the security system a complete joke. The part that bothered us was why Demon and Vulture had such a hard time getting in there in the first place. As soon as we saw pictures of them, we knew why.

Demon looked like any normal guy, about the same height as Logan with red hair and brown eyes, but when he used his mutation he turned bright red and sprouted claws from his fingers. Vulture on the other hand looked…unfortunate. At six feet, eight inches tall, he would stick out like a sore thumb anywhere in the Orient and his huge, black-feathered wings were no help. I laughed out loud when I saw the photos, then immediately went in search of the Colonel for a little "girl talk".

I found her in lab three, which is where they would test mutations to their very limits. Seeing the facilities they had around here made me miss the Danger Room terribly, simply because we could test anything there at little risk to the subject. Of course, the people here weren't worried about how much they hurt us, just how much we could hurt other people for them. No one met my eyes as I walked in, the story of what had happened to Davison and Miller preceding me. Good.

"Colonel Sidowski, could I have a word with you?" I asked when I came up beside her.

She frowned as she looked down at me. "What's this about, Hellcat? I'm busy."

"Beijing," I said simply. She tried to stare me down, but the only person who's ever succeeded in doing that is Logan and that's only because he cheated and started talking dirty to me.

The Colonel sniffed impatiently, then turned to the lab coat next to her. "I'll be back in a few minutes, Dr. Jurski. Carry on." I took note of the man she'd spoken to, who looked like a cross between Winston Churchill and a Pekinese. She gestured for me to follow her and she led me back to her office, her bodyguards right behind us. Once she settled down behind the desk, I took a seat without prompting. She frowned a bit at that, but didn't say anything. "So, what's this about?"

I tossed the Beijing file on her desk. "How long have you been here, Colonel?" I asked, gazing at her impassively.

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"I want to know who assigned these two for this mission. I have some questions for him or her. Sir."

"Well, not that it's any of your business, but I've only had this post for about two years. I believe that Colonel Neiman was responsible for that assignment."

"I see." I sat back and looked at the woman in front of me, so obviously career military that I was willing to bet she folded her underwear. "Do you have any idea what prompted him to send this team?"

"Asp and Tigress were in the middle east on a deep-cover assignment." She gave me a very pointed look. "We didn't have any other active operatives to send."

"My heart bleeds, really." I snorted sarcastically.

"Hellcat, you are skating on some pretty thin ice here," She snapped, clearly unhappy with my attitude, not that I gave a shit. "This is a military operation and I expect a certain amount of respect from my subordinates!"

I leaned forward in my chair. "Colonel, don't bullshit me. This is a 'military' facility in name and budget only. I know for a fact that everyone here, from janitors all the way up to you, is here because the Director has something on everyone and this is the last stop before court martial. You make good here, something bad disappears from your record and you can go back to your regular military career and pretend this never happened."

"What is this, blackmail?" She narrowed her eyes as she levered herself out of her seat. "You think I'm going to tell you why I got this post?"

"I don't give a fuck why you're here, Colonel. I just want to know how much smarter you are than your predecessor."

She glared down at me, but sat back down. "What do you mean?"

"One of the reasons Wolverine and I were the best is because Stryker was no fool. He sent his weapons out based on their strengths. Some teams are better for a direct assault, others should be saved for recon or covert night ops." I reached over and tapped the file on her desk. "Vulture will never be able to do a long-term covert op, because he is not easy to hide. He's got a fourteen-foot wingspan for fuck's sake, yet this Colonel Neiman sent him to China to take out one guy who's spilling your secrets. He'd have been better off going himself and pulling the trigger."

"That's not how we operate and you know it."

"Oh, I do. But Stryker understood one thing better than anyone. No matter what you may think of us, call us animals if you will, we still have brains and we can _think._ He trained each and every one of us to be the best at what we do, but I don't see anything in Vulture's docket that says he's the best at a covert op like this. He's a flyer, so he'd be best used for recon and aerial backup in a frontal assault. Asp and Tigress would be better for covert work, but she still has fur which is still kind of hard to explain." I sat back and folded my hands across my chest. "Wolverine and I can blend in anywhere and have done so many times. Sometimes we were hikers or a couple on vacation, whatever. But we can pass for human wherever we go."

"Yes well the two of you weren't available and why is that? Oh, that's right," she glared at me in a way I'm sure she thought was intimidating, "the two of you killed almost everyone at Alkali Lake and escaped. So sorry we were unable to send the best."

"Look, I'm not here to argue with you, Colonel. All I'm saying is that Stryker was smart enough to know how to use his mutants. This op was activated what, over three years ago? And you haven't even tried to send anyone else in since Demon and Vulture were recalled. Why is that?"

"The Director gave the recall order, Hellcat."

"That's not what I asked. I want to know how come Colonel Neiman never sent anyone in before this. For that matter, why didn't you? Asp could have probably done this blindfolded."

"We only send out teams of two and as you pointed out, Tigress has fur."

I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair. "Fine, whatever, you don't have enough operatives who can pass as human, I get that. But a human assassin could have taken this guy out ages ago."

"No, they couldn't. We tried." She sighed and almost seemed to collapse in on herself. "He always knew where they were and managed to escape."

Now it was my turn to frown. "Is he a mutant?"

"What?"

"Is he a mutant? A telepath maybe?"

"There's nothing in his jacket that says he is."

"But you don't know for sure."

"No, we don't. But it would have come up on his yearly physical in the blood work."

"Not if someone's manipulating the results. Especially if he's not the only one in on this whole scheme of his in the first place."

"So what do you suggest we do? Send another telepath after him?"

"Not necessarily. I mean, he works at one of your facilities, right?" She nodded. "So have him reassigned here. Or if that's not an option, have one of your telepaths from here assigned there."

"No, it's too risky. We can't afford to lose any of the telepaths." She smirked at me and I resisted the urge to slap her. "Mutants like you, on the other hand, are more suited to this kind of work."

"I see." I stood up and grabbed the file. "Fine, we'll go in and take your guy out. But just remember one thing. Stryker was a madman but he was no fool. We're not all cut from the same cloth. He knew that in order to send the best team for the job, he had to ask someone who knew them well. I just hope you'll keep that in mind next time."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that when you need the impossible done, you send the best. And if you can't do that, you wait until you can. You might intimidate your other operatives, but I'm not impressed and neither is Wolverine. You need to keep in mind that even though you think we're animals, we have human brains and we can use them. If you're smart, you'll try asking us, _all_ of us, if we think we're the right ones for the job."

"If the two of you are the best, why should I? Shouldn't you be able to do anything we want you to do?"

"Sure we could, but there's only two of us. And the others aren't completely useless. But Stryker knew he had to use the carrot as well as the stick to get his 'animals' to work." I turned and left the office, leaving her to think about what I'd said. Yeah, it was a risk, talking to her like that. But I'd been in this business a lot longer and I knew I was right. I only hoped she'd take the advice for what it was.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Logan and I left for Beijing two days later. We'd memorized the layout of the facility, the security system and decided on our primary and secondary extraction points. Sidowski must have taken our little talk to heart, because she actually asked us how we wanted to handle this op. Logan and I shamelessly decided that we would be a couple on vacation, partly because it made the most sense but also because it would give us a chance to stay in a real hotel and we could pretend it was our honeymoon. I could tell she wasn't thrilled with letting us out in civvies so soon after our return, but the Director overrode her objections and we were sent off with suitcases full of normal clothes, as well as the equipment we would need in the field.

We took a military transport as far as their facility in the Philippines, then took a commercial airliner the rest of the way. We'd been provided with special medical identification stating that each of us had some variety of metal somewhere in our bodies. Logan was the proud owner of a metal plate in his skull, while I was the unfortunate victim of a shooting and still had a bullet lodged near my spine in such a way that removing it was riskier than leaving it alone. The officials at the airport had no choice but to accept these explanations and waved us through the line. The flight was short and scary – I'll never like flying – but we landed in Beijing soon enough and checked into our hotel at Oriental Plaza.

Since we didn't officially exist anymore, we saw no reason to travel under anything but our real names. But the Colonel didn't see it that way, so all of our identification, passports, even our fingerprints, were under the names of "James and Andrea Powell", perfectly bland names for any American couple vacationing abroad. I hated it. "Do I _look_ like an 'Andrea' to you?" I complained as I tossed my suitcase in the closet, a little harder than was strictly necessary.

"Don't feel bad darlin'," Logan replied with a snort, "they gave me my real first name an' probably don't even know it."

"You don't look like a 'James' either. You'll always be Logan to me." I flopped down on the bed and covered my eyes with my forearm. "You know, I've changed my name so many times I don't even remember what my real one is?"

"You mean it's not Angela?" He asked, easing himself next to me.

I shook my head. "Nope. It was something close though, like Angelica or Angeline, something very turn of the century." I looked at him and smirked. "Weird huh? They took your memories to make you easier to control, but I lost the one thing you'd think I'd never forget all on my own." I rolled over and rested my head on his shoulder. "Maybe it was Evangeline."

"Well, wouldn't there be a birth certificate somewhere, where you were born?"

"Mm, probably. But it's not that important to me, really. Angela's close enough."

"How many names you been through?"

"Oh, fucked if I know. A hundred years and change divided by a new name every five or ten years? At least fifteen I suppose."

"You should at least try to find out, see if there's any records on you down there."

I raised myself up on my elbow and peered at him curiously. "Why does it matter to you if it doesn't matter to me?"

He looked away and seemed almost embarrassed. "I spent so much time not knowin' who I was or where I came from, just seems wrong that you don't know either."

"I know exactly who I am, lover." I said as I leaned down to kiss him. "I am Angela Logan, which is Mrs. You in case you've forgotten." I pressed my lips to his and he responded immediately, his hand moving up my back to grasp a handful of hair. I molded myself to him, my body wanting to be as close to him as it could be, and I slipped my hands under his shirt to lightly caress his chest. He returned the gesture, moving his hands over my skin in that way that always made me shiver, the gentle touch that anyone who'd never slept with him would never believe he was capable of. He slid my own shirt over my head and, of course, that was when the phone had to ring. "Ignore it," I breathed, not wanting to stop, "it's just the Colonel checking in, she can leave a message."

"Ya know if we don't," he replied, still working my clothes off, "a buncha soldier's are gonna bust in here any second."

"Let them," I murmured, fumbling with his belt buckle, "give them a show, teach them a thing or two."

The phone kept up its insistent ringing and Logan growled in frustration. He rolled me over and pinned me in place with one hand while he picked up the phone with the other. "What?!" He snapped.

"Logan, hang up on them." I whispered, trying to wriggle free from his grasp and finish getting his pants unfastened. "Tell them to piss off, we're naked."

"Uh-huh, yes sir," He mumbled as he glared down at me. I managed to work myself around so I could reach him and immediately pulled on the top button of jeans. Since it was a button fly, the rest of them followed suit and I slipped my hand inside before he could stop me. "Correct sir. Oh-four-thirty our time." His voice was strained and he continued to try and glare, but it was a losing battle. "Roger that. Yes sir." He put the phone down and pounced on me. "You are in so much trouble now!" He growled.

"Ooh, does that mean I get a spanking?" I teased, then shrieked as he pinned me down and started kissing my neck. We weren't supposed to start any of our personal recon until the next day and I know the "oh-four-thirty our time" was in reference to our extraction time, so I gave myself over to my husband, enjoying the bit of free time we would have before our return to Weapon X was complete.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We slept comparatively late, rising after nine in the morning, which felt positively decadent after weeks of waking at six o'clock or earlier. In order to maintain the illusion of a couple on vacation, we ordered room service for breakfast, then sat in bed eating fresh strawberries and drinking champagne until my head started to feel light. Sure, I have a healing factor too, but unlike Logan – who throws off the effects of alcohol as soon as it hits his system – mine still takes a little while to catch up. So the half bottle of bubbly made me a little giddy for all of about half an hour, which seemed to amuse Logan to no end – he kept smirking and calling me a lightweight.

We were out in the streets of Beijing before noon in hopes of catching our target at lunch, both of us armed with digital cameras that looked like the ones anyone can pick up at their local Best Buy, but were in reality far more advanced. The image quality was roughly a thousand times better and would not suffer from severe distortion when blown up. We also wore micro-cameras, not unlike the one Buzz had planted on me once upon a time, which fed the images back to a laptop back in our hotel room. We walked around and did the silly tourist thing, Logan taking pictures of me in front of this thing or that, but we actually never strayed more than a block away from our objective.

It was a research and development lab, cleverly hidden in my favorite place – plain sight. The building itself wasn't as tall as others on the same block, but it was still an impressive tower of mirrored glass, concrete and steel. Since the research being done here wasn't necessarily volatile, there was no reason to put it in a sparsely populated area. Having it in the heart of their business district made it seem more benign than it really was, since the stuff they were developing in there was ultimately going to be used in the eradication of mutants. Most of the internal workings of the Sentinels had been developed here, for example, as well as the Master Mold. But a little over three years ago, many of the breakthroughs were inexplicably patented by the Chinese before anyone anywhere in the United States military structure could cut through the red tape to get the patents themselves. This phenomenon was eventually traced to one Thomas Marshall, a civilian engineer that had been part of Weapon X even longer than anyone else, even predating me. As well paid as he was, he'd been living far above his means for the past few years. By having his people hack into Marshall's bank records, Colonel Neiman had discovered regular deposits going into his accounts from a numbered account in Switzerland. Shortly after that, his accounts were all cleared out, presumably to Swiss accounts of his own.

During our prep in the days preceding our arrival, I'd tracked down Vulture and interrogated him at great length about why they never hit the guy at home. I'd been partially correct in assuming it was because of his painfully obvious wings, but only partially. The rest of it had to do with his odd working hours and the fact that he seemed to maintain more than one residence. He also seemed to have the uncanny ability to know when he was being tailed, but again there was nothing in Marshall's files about him being a mutant. It didn't mean he wasn't one, so Logan and I made sure to keep our thoughts as bland and touristy as possible, not to mention remain inconspicuous, which allowed me to give Logan some good-natured ribbing.

"You know, they'd believe you were a real westerner if you'd just turn it around." I commented as I took yet another picture from where I was sitting on a bench in a park across the way. "Everyone knows Americans wear their baseball caps backwards."

He grunted. "I ain't American."

"You are now, Mr. Powell." I smirked and snapped another shot, this time catching a group of people as they left the building.

"Yeah well I hate the fuckin' thing, don't even wanna be wearin' it."

"It was either that or try shaving your head," I murmured as I used the zoom feature on the camera to see if Marshall was in the group that had just left. He wasn't and I bit back a curse. "Personally, I don't want to see you bald, it would look funny."

"It grows back in a few hours." He pulled on the bill of the cap and scowled. "Don't see why I need the damn thing anyway."

"In case you've forgotten, you have very distinctive hair that defies all attempts to tame it into another style. I mean, I could probably do something with it if I had about an hour and some gel that's been wind tunnel tested to eighty miles per hour."

He scowled down at me. "You're makin' that up."

"Nope, not even close." Another group exited the building and I snapped a photo. "Back when punk rock was really in, I had a friend with a mohawk that was about eight inches high. He used to make it stand straight up with this stuff he found and it said right on the back 'wind tunnel tested to eighty miles per hour'. If _that_ doesn't tame your hair, nothing will."

"All these amazin' breakthroughs in science an' the best they can come up with is wind tunnel tested gel an' people like us."

"I know, wacky ain't it?" I smiled as I zoomed in on the last picture and found our guy. "Bingo, we got him."

He peered across the street to the group that was still clustered in front of the building, finishing a conversation. "Which one?"

"Uh, third from the left, navy blue pants, white shirt, red tie." I looked up and strained my ears, but they were too far away and the sounds of traffic and people covered anything they were saying. "I have an idea."

"Lemme guess, the poor lost tourist in China?"

"Bingo!" I stood and gathered up my camera bag and purse, then fixed a wireless com over my ear. It looked just like one of those cellular earpieces everyone was using, but it was only to allow Logan to stay in contact with me. I smiled and winked, then pushed my way into the crowd and across the street. I kept an eye on the group, watching them as the broke up and started going their separate ways. I pulled a pair of sunglasses out of my purse and slipped them on, then grabbed a map of the city and unfolded it, doing my best to look lost. I moved absently in a straight line towards him, glancing from my map to the street, to him and back again, frowning in feigned confusion. Fifteen seconds later, I ran right into him, dropping my purse and the camera bag. "Oh Jesus I'm so sorry!" I exclaimed, dropping to pick up the scattered items from the purse.

He fell to his knee and helped me gather my stuff. "No, it's my fault, I shouldn't have been woolgathering on this busy sidewalk." He handed me a tube of lipstick that was threatening to roll away. "It's nice to see a fellow American here. On vacation?"

"Honeymoon, actually." I replied with a shy smile, pushing a lock of hair out of my eye. "But I seem to have lost my husband."

"So soon?" He replied with a smile.

I looked down and feigned a blush. "Yeah well, I did an airhead thing and left the camera in our hotel. I'm supposed to meet him at the Temple of the Sun, but I seem to have gotten turned around somehow."

"I should say so!" He handed me my wallet, which I stuffed back into the purse before shouldering it and standing up. "Here, let me see your map." He moved next to me and pointed to the map. "Ok, this is where we are. You want to go three blocks that way and turn right, go another four blocks and you can't miss it."

I followed his pointed directions on the map, nodding in the all the right places. "God, I would have wandered around here forever at the rate I was going." I laughed. "Thank you so much, Mr…"

"Marshall, Thomas Marshall." He stuck out his hand and I shook it, then slid my hand into my pants pocket. "And you are?"

"Andrea Powell. And thanks again, Mr. Marshall." I pulled my hand out of my pocket and laid it on his arm in a friendly gesture, using that seemingly innocent touch to place a small, transparent tracking device on him. "Maybe we'll see you around? I'm sure my husband will want to thank you for helping me."

"Who knows? Beijing isn't so big, once you're used to it." He smiled and went on his way with a careless wave and I watched him go.

As soon as he disappeared down a subway entrance, I tapped my com. "Target is tagged."

"Copy that." He replied. "Get back over here an' we'll return to base."

"Roger." I folded up the map and made my way back across to the small park and Logan. He smiled at me and I grinned back. "So, how was that performance?"

"Oh, definitely Oscar quality." He said and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. "C'mon, we gotta get back to the hotel, see where he's goin'."

I sighed. "Yeah, I know. We shouldn't have told the Colonel we could do this in two days."

"But we can."

"That's not the point. This place is so pretty, I'd love to see more of it."

"I promise, once this is all over, we'll come back. We'll go anywhere ya want."

"Cool." He kissed the top of my head and we hailed a taxi. We continued to play the tourists, pointing at different things and snapping pictures, but inside we were both all business. The scary part was, I kind of liked it.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We set up the laptop and reviewed all the images we'd taken with the digital camera, the micro-cameras and combined them with the data from the tracking device. The device itself was very clever, a biodegradable design that would break down completely in twenty-four hours. Marshall had returned to the lab roughly ninety minutes after I tagged him and worked another seven hours before leaving for the night. Since the hotel staff all thought we were honeymooning, they didn't think anything of it when we ordered our dinner to our room. Answering the door in a bathrobe helped to maintain that illusion and kept the waiter from trying to come in and set things up for us. But we were still very much newlyweds in fact, so we set the computer to alert us when Marshall was no longer on the move and fell into bed with our dessert.

About three hours later, the computer started beeping most insistently. I groaned and pulled the covers over my head, but Logan padded over and sat down naked in front of it. I peeked out and laughed when I caught the scene. He scowled over his shoulder. "What's so funny?"

"You look like a dirty old man surfing porn on the 'net." I replied, wrapping the sheet around me and joining him. "So, what's he doing now?"

"Looks like he's settled for the night." He typed some commands into the laptop that brought up a map of Beijing and the surrounding area, then typed a few more that would allow him to pinpoint his exact location. We were in luck; the address it gave us was a private residence a few miles outside the city limits. "Ok darlin', time to go."

I sighed. "Roger that." I let the sheet slide to the floor and crossed over to the closet. Logan packed up the computer and other electronics while I pulled out the bag that held our work clothes, which were really just dark charcoal grey pants and shirts. I put a bright red silk blouse over my micro-fiber shirt and slipped my feet into semi-dressy black flats while Logan covered his shirt with a tasteful gray oxford and shoved his feet into a pair of loafers he eyed with extreme distaste. I looked at him sympathetically. "I know you hate them, but we won't have to wear them for long."

"I fuckin' hate undercover," He grumbled, grabbing the leather jacket he'd worn here. "Rather go completely covert an' wear what I wanna wear."

"Me too, lover. But there was no other way to do this." I slipped a PDA into my purse that would alert us if Marshall was on the move again along with a set of lockpicks and the one thing I didn't want to bring with me; a handgun. "Don't know why I had to bring this damn thing."

"'Cause the colonel said ya had to," He replied as he adjusted the jacket. It was almost brand-new, so it wasn't broken in the way his regular one was. "Just leave it with me if ya don't want it when we get there."

"Believe me, I will." We exited the hotel room and made our way to the elevator, holding hands and cuddling like real tourists. We took public transportation as far as we could, avoiding taxis or other forms where someone might be able to identify us later. We got off the subway at the last stop before we would get into some very non-touristy areas, which would not help us in the least. We faked towards a nightclub, but slipped down a nearby alley instead. We shed our unnecessary clothing (except the shoes) and I climbed onto Logan's back. He slid his claws out slowly and buried them in the brick wall next to us, scrambling to the roof of the building. We would take the high road for as long as we could, since most of the buildings in this area were no more than about four stories and built close enough together that we could clear the gaps with little effort. By the time we got to the point where we had to take to the ground, we were close to the edge of the city proper and moving into comparatively less populated areas.

We still had to do a bit of tricky maneuvering to avoid other people, but hell, that's what we're trained to do. I wished like hell we could have started out closer to his house, but we take what we can get and go with it. And it wasn't like this was the furthest we'd ever had to go overland to get to a target, but it was definitely the most populated area we'd dealt with in ages. We had wanted to have a car of our own to drive, but the Colonel had said no and I wondered if she was trying to test us, see if we could do this without being seen. I hated her, gods only know how much, but if this was the game she wanted to play, so be it. We'd played it longer and we played it better, but most of all we played to win.

A little under two hours later, we came up to the estate where Marshall had come to rest. Our PDA indicated that he was still inside, moving around near the back of the house, so we moved as close to it as we could get. Logan must have caught a scent, because he motioned for me to stop and stood there with his head cocked to one side for a moment, then motioned for me to follow him to a small copse of trees about fifteen yards down the road. "He's got guards, at least four on the perimeter."

"Which means we can count on there being at least that many we can't see…or smell," I replied, frowning. "Do we have time to do some recon on the house, come back tomorrow?"

"No, we don't. An' we know he's got at least two other places he stays, so we can't be sure he'll be here tomorrow anyway." He muttered a curse and ran his fingers through his hair. "Well, we're here, might as well do this. Ya want inside or out?"

I grinned. "What do you think?" I kicked off my shoes and threw them into a stream across the street. "You're better off outside anyway, you know they'll have weapons." I pulled the handgun out and gave to him, then stuffed the lockpicks in my pocket and the PDA in my waistband at the back. Logan checked the safety on the gun and did the same with it. "All right, I'll take the high road to the roof, see if I can find a window to jimmy. You do what you do best down here."

"Roger that." He grabbed me and kissed me hard, his hand buried in my hair. "Be safe, darlin'."

"Aren't I always?" I replied with a wink, then scrambled up the nearest tree. I took stock of my surroundings, looking for the best path to take to the roof of the nearby house. It was a thoroughly modern affair, bland beige stucco over brick with a flat roof and way too many windows on the side facing the street. An eight-foot wall of the same stucco surrounded the whole thing and there appeared to be broken glass embedded in the top of it. Sodium arc floodlights bathed the entire compound in a sickly yellow glow, leaving precious little cover from shadows that I could use. As I peered across the lawn, I could make out at least five guards patrolling the front lawn, two of which had dogs with them, and they all appeared to be holding guns of some variety. Now why would a supposed electrical engineer need this kind of muscle? I tapped my com and reported what I saw to Logan.

"How close are ya to bein' in position?" He asked.

"Not very. Bastard doesn't have a tree over four feet tall within ten yards of the wall."

"Hm, that could make this very interestin'."

"Define 'interesting' please."

"Means ya need a diversion an' since I'm the only one left, guess I'm elected."

"Wolverine, need I remind you this is supposed to be a covert op?"

"Ain't nothin' to be done 'bout it." He went silent for a moment and I knew he was puzzling out a way to do this with a minimum of fuss for me. "Can ya make it to the northwest corner o' the wall?"

I checked out the position and did some quick calculations in my head. "Yeah, I can. Why?"

"'Cause the southwest corner's 'bout to suffer from a failure with the floodlights in 'bout thirty seconds."

"Copy Wolverine. Going silent. Hellcat out." I quickly leapt from tree to tree, clearing a few gaps by the grace of my claws alone, but I made it to the corner only a few seconds before I heard the sound of metal against metal and the corner opposite me was bathed in darkness. Immediately, all five guards and the dogs went sprinting across the lawn towards the failed spotlight, leaving me the opening I needed. I dropped from the tree and dashed silently to the next nearest tree tall enough for my purposes, which was approximately twenty-five yards ahead of me. I thanked the gods that it was a fairly warm night, so there was no dew on the grass yet to show betraying footprints. I scrambled up and waited a few moments to get my bearings.

Two more guards came from around the back, running as fast as they could towards the southwest corner, but I was certain that Logan was already long gone from there. He'd already be on his way to the back, to take care of the guards still at their posts back there and eventually he'd work his way all around and take them out one by one. As soon as the reinforcements were out of my line of sight, I leapt from my perch and sprinted the rest of the way to the house. There was a conveniently placed drainpipe running up the corner, well clear of any windows, so I tested it to see if it would hold my weight. It didn't budge, so I slid out my toe claws, grabbed either side of the pipe and scurried up to the roof as fast as I could. Of course, this only took me to the top of the first floor; the second floor was only half the size of the lower one, but fortunately the only windows facing me were clerestory style and Marshall would have to be at least ten feet tall to even see out of them. On the roof behind me was a partially sunken hot tub surrounded by bushy plants in bamboo pots, a glass-topped table with four chairs and a pair of chaise lounges. Obviously, Marshall did some entertaining up here and I wondered how the hell he got out here in the first place. It took me a moment to realize there was a walkway leading around to the back, so I stalked over there carefully. A tall ficus in another ubiquitous bamboo pot stood at the corner, so I slid cautiously behind it and peered around the other side of the wall.

And that's where my luck ran out. An armed guard was standing in front of a sliding glass door which appeared to lead to a kind of rec room, since I could see a big screen television, state-of-the-art stereo sound system and a wet bar from my vantage point. He was talking on a radio in rapid Chinese and I cursed myself for never being very good with languages. Oh, I can call someone an asshole in about fifteen of them, but anything useful just never stuck for long. I waited patiently for him to turn his back on me, which took far too long by my estimation, but he finally did and I made my move.

I snuck carefully along the wall, willing the man to keep his back to me. I managed to get within striking distance when he turned, but I was already on him, a hand over his mouth. "Nothing personal," I whispered as I slashed through his forearm with my free hand and grabbed his weapon before it could fall. I let go of his mouth and tore his throat open before he could make a sound, then lowered him carefully to the ground. I took a moment to drag the body over to the hot tub and roll him into it, the gun sinking to the bottom next to him. I padded carefully back to the glass door and pulled my lockpicks out of my pocket. I scanned the door carefully, looking for any sign of an alarm or other security system, but I didn't see anything. I worked quickly on the lock, springing it open in under ten seconds. I put the picks away and gently eased the door open.

The house would have seemed quiet to anyone with normal hearing, but my ears caught the sound of Marshall's voice approaching the rec room. I eased the door closed again, flinching at the click of the latch that sounded positively deafening to me. I quickly scanned the room and dashed to the wet bar, the only decent cover in the whole room. Marshall seemed to be on the phone with someone, as he would pause occasionally in his conversation, or else he was talking to himself and waiting for answers. Either way, I heard a door open and close nearby and I breathed a sigh of relief. I hoped he was going into a bedroom or bathroom, because that would make my job infinitely easier. I left my meager cover and made my way to the door that would take me into the hallway.

I listened for a moment before opening it, making sure there was no one on the other side. Once I was satisfied, I opened it carefully and stepped into the dimly lit hall. There were two doors – one across from me and one next to me - and it was behind the latter that I could hear Marshall's voice. He sounded like he was arguing with someone, again in Chinese, but I really couldn't care at that point. I waited a few seconds and was actually startled when I heard the sound of plastic shattering. Whatever that conversation was about, he really didn't like the way it ended. I heard him muttering under his breath and decided it was time to make my move.

As soon as I opened the door, Marshall shouted "God damn it, Jia, I thought I told you to leave!" I closed the door behind me and started across the room. "Fuck, don't you listen? I said…" He came out of an en suite bathroom and stopped dead in his tracks. "Andrea?"

"For today." I smiled at him coldly and slid my claws out. "Usually, they call me Hellcat."

His eyes widened as he went pale, looking around quickly for a means of escape. Unfortunately for him, I was in between it and him. "Hellcat? No fucking way, she _left_ Weapon X!"

"And I came back." I shrugged and stalked towards him. "When there's nothing to live for, might as well do something that might eventually kill me."

He shook his head in denial as he backed away. "No, it can't be, there's _no way_ she would come back."

"Does my reputation precede me? Did they tell you how I like to play?" I continued forward slowly as he backed up until he was flush against the wall and I was mere inches from him. "Did they tell you I like to take my time?"

"My guards…how did you get past them? Why are you here?"

I ran a claw down the side of his face just hard enough to break the skin and he shuddered. "Oh, you mean the ones outside? I got the one up here, but I'm sure Wolverine got the rest of them before I made it inside." I grabbed him by the throat, cutting off most of his air and pulled him down to my face. "As to why, I think you know. Or did you think because we were gone, that they'd never be able to get anyone close enough to you to kill you when you sold their secrets?"

"It…worked…for…awhile." He managed to gasp, his hands clawing at my arm, but I ignored the pain. "Let…me go…I'll cut…you…in."

"Oh Thomas, do you think I have any use for money? I'm a killer, it's what I do." I lowered my voice to a whisper. "It's what they made me for." I raked my claws down the other side of his face, tearing it open deep enough to see his teeth from the outside. He tried to scream, but he only managed a weak croak because of my hand on his throat. "And by the time I'm done with you, you'll know for a fucking _fact_ I'm Hellcat."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Forty minutes later, after finishing with Marshall and cleaning the blood off my hands in his bathroom, I sprinted across the lawn to the front gate. Logan was waiting for me in the shadow of a tall juniper bush, smoking a cigar and looking bored. I climbed over the wrought-iron masterpiece and landed lightly beside him. "Took ya long enough." He grunted.

"I'm out of practice." I explained with a shrug. "The guards give you any trouble?"

"Nah, they didn't even have time to fire their guns." He took a drag off his cigar, then stubbed it out. "Didn't kill the dogs though. I hate killin' animals, 'less I have to."

"So where are they?"

"Didn't say I didn't knock 'em out." He sighed and checked his watch. "C'mon, time to get to the extraction point."

"How far is it?"

"'Bout five klicks down the road, why?"

"Do we have to walk?"

"Got a better idea?"

I shrugged and grinned up at him. "Well, after a mass murder, what's a little car theft?"

He grinned back and chuckled. "No wonder I fell in love with ya." He said, then leaned down and kissed me. "Stay here, I'll be right back."

I melted into the shadows of the juniper as he scrambled over the wall. A few minutes later, the gates opened and he drove up in a sleek black BMW. I hopped in the passenger side and he drove off as soon as I slammed the door shut behind me. "Nice ride," I commented with a smile.

"Ain't as nice as the GTO, but at least I get to drive it," He replied with a smirk and I laughed. Even after all the time we'd been together, I wouldn't let him drive my baby. I'd restored her with my own hands, only relying on outside help for the cosmetic things. It had taken me four years to get her perfect and I wasn't about to let anyone else behind the wheel, a fact that had always frustrated Logan to no end.

"Look lover, it's not that I don't trust you," I said, still smiling, "cuz you know I do, with my life. But would you let another man drive _me_?" He looked over at me with a scowl and I laughed. "So why would I let anyone else drive my car?"

"It ain't the same thing an' you know it," He grumbled, but left it there. It was the same argument we'd had a thousand times and he knew he'd never win. We made it to the extraction point with plenty of time to spare, so Logan took the car and dumped it somewhere, returning about half an hour later on foot. We were on a low hill that overlooked the city, which glittered jewel-bright in the darkness. I had climbed a tree to wait for him, but dropped down as soon as I saw him approaching. "All done," He said as he sat down in the grass.

"What'd you do to it?" I asked, sitting in front of him with my back pressed into his chest.

"You'll see," He replied cryptically and wrapped his arms around me. About half a minute later, there was an explosion about a mile away and I laughed. "What's so funny?"

"You are," I replied, wiping tears of mirth from my eyes. "You could have just abandoned it, you know."

"What, an' miss out on all the fun? I'm a man, I like explosions." He shifted his position and pulled me onto his lap, then looked deep into my eyes. "Are ya all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Only one guard on the upstairs door and he was easy enough to take out. Marshall didn't even try to…"

He cut me off. "That's not what I mean, darlin'." He cupped my face gently, stroking my cheek with his thumb. "Are _you_ all right? Up here." He tapped my forehead.

I looked down and sighed. "Yeah, I'll be all right. I mean, I wonder what he was really doing, why they wanted him dead. They could have just reassigned him or something, but they left him here and they kept losing money on the research he was selling. But I guarantee, he was no telepath."

"You sure?"

"Positive. He didn't believe that I was really Hellcat until the very end. A telepath would have known the second I walked in the room." I shook my head and looked down. "But the killing part? It's easy, you know how easy it is. I never wondered why before, back at Alkali Lake. I just did what I was told and didn't worry about the why. Now I'll always wonder, but I can't let it get in the way."

"Ya know we can get out again, anytime ya want. Just say the word an' we'll vanish into thin air again."

I nodded. "I know and they know that too. But we have to do this, we have to finish what we started."

He pulled me close and kissed me gently, then rested his chin on top of my head. We sat there like that for almost two hours, just watching the night pass by, listening to the sounds around us. When the car finally came to pick us up, the driver seemed surprised that we were there, much less finished with the job. But what did they expect? We're the best at what we do.

* * *

**AN:** Well, there it is, another chapter...:) I'm gonna be lazy today cuz i'm very tired (it's almost 11:00 AM and i haven't slept yet) and give a huge blanket Special Thanks to my beta's, my readers and my reviewers...i hope you all forgive me...:)

**But i'm still gonna remind everyone that new chapters will come with new reviewers! So if you've never reviewed before, give it a go! Just say "Hi" or something, it's all good to me...:)**


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

(Professor X)

I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised when Mr. Bennington dropped by for a visit. After all, nothing escapes his notice; eventually, anything worth knowing will cross his desk. But his sudden appearance at my office door still startled me and I wondered for the first time if he had any mutations he'd never told us about. "Mr. Bennington, this is a surprise," I said as I came around my desk. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

He walked in and closed the door behind him before taking a seat near the window. "Dr. Xavier…"

"Please, call me Charles."

"Very well, Charles." He pulled a photograph out of his pocket and handed it to me. "I'm going to get right to the point. What the hell are they doing?"

I looked at the photo and sighed heavily. It was a grainy black and white photo of Logan and Angela, standing on a very busy street in what appeared to be China. "Mr. Bennington, I can assure you…"

"Call me Terrence. And don't give me some line of bullshit about how they're just on vacation or something. Less than twelve hours after this photo was taken, a man named Thomas Marshall was found dead in his home, his body was horribly mutilated. His guards were also killed with some enthusiasm, though the guard dogs were inexplicably left alive. The last time autopsy photos like that crossed my desk, Wolverine and Hellcat were an unstoppable team in Weapon X." He leaned forward, narrowing his eyes. "Now I'm only going to ask you one more time. What the hell are they doing?"

"Terrence, you have to understand that the situation is extremely complicated." I handed the photo back to him and it disappeared back inside his jacket. "As you may recall, you gave the two of them some files and told them that you were not concerned with what happened to the people and facilities in those files, since they technically did not exist."

"Yes, I know. Weapon X is a menace, Charles, their original agenda completely lost since the Director took over."

"And what, precisely, was their 'original agenda'?"

He gazed at me impassively and I could sense that he was trying to determine if he could trust me enough to tell me or not. "If I tell you this, I will be technically breaking the rules of my own office, understood?" I nodded and he leaned back in his chair. "During World War II, things were not going well for us. Hitler seemed poised to accomplish everything he said he would and we could feel ourselves running out of time. Back then, mutants were not commonly known, most of them as fearful of their own powers as they knew others would be. But we still knew that we needed something to give us an upper hand, something that would help us to achieve victory over Hitler's regime. One group of scientists was already working on the atomic bomb, but there were others who were reluctant to use something that would cause such widespread destruction. So, President Roosevelt came to me and asked me what I thought we should do.

"Since I've fought in every conflict since the beginning of the country, I have a unique perspective on the art of war. I advised the President that instead of something that would have such unpredictable results, perhaps something a little more surgical would suffice. I had no idea what would eventually come of that conversation until it was too late, but he agreed with me and left shortly after that. A few weeks later, I received my first memo about the American 'Super Soldier' program, called 'Operation: Rebirth', but I didn't think anything of it at first because it seemed to be nothing more than a simple physical conditioning program. It wasn't until Steve Rogers was transformed into Captain America that I realized what they were doing and by then, it was too late.

"Unfortunately, Rogers was the only person who ever survived the experiment with all of his faculties intact. Others given the Super Soldier serum and treatments either went insane or had their mental faculties reduced to that of mere children. It is unclear why this happened, although in later years the popular theory was that Rogers was already a mutant and the others were not, which is what allowed him to survive the procedure in the first place. However, it has since been discovered that there were other genetic anomalies in the other subjects that rendered them incompatible with the serum. Back then, we didn't have the technology to test for such things, so they simply didn't know.

"Now, much of this is common knowledge, that Captain America was a normal guy who volunteered to become what he is for the good of his country. What isn't known is that Operation: Rebirth was the first stage of the Weapon Plus program, which was eventually buried so deep that it wasn't until it evolved into Weapon X that I learned anything more about it."

"Terrence, all of this is in the files that you gave us," I said, leaning forward a bit, "I hardly see what bearing it has on our current situation."

"Even though the word 'mutant' hadn't become common knowledge yet, there were already people who suspected there were those among us who were not only different, but wildly so. Mostly it was people who had children, who woke up one day to find their perfect little angels could pick up a car or read their minds. How terrifying it must have been for them, to see something so completely beyond what they knew happening before their very eyes. The whole mutant phenomenon may have been handled much differently if not for the niece of a high-profile general manifesting mutant powers." He smiled ironically, as though he knew what I was going to say. "And no, I'm not going to tell you who. But it was because of this that Weapon Plus was started, as the gentleman in question was convinced that these 'aberrant humans' as he put it would eventually destroy the human race as we knew it and he was not going to stand for that."

"An army of mutants, created to kill mutants, conditioned to be the perfect living weapons." I frowned and leaned back, not entirely surprised by this revelation. After all, hadn't I suspected that all along? But the one failing that the program had was its dependence on mutants with a healing factor. It was rare that it occurred in mutants that were not also feral in nature, but since those who possess it are the only ones likely to survive the bonding process, there was little choice. However, the Director was operating under the assumption that Erik would remain under lock and key forever, but I knew otherwise. Eventually, his location would be discovered and his followers would contrive a way to break him out of his new prison. He also seemed unaware that there were other mutants that could manipulate metal or magnetism – we had one of each here at the school – so his obsession with the bonding process made little sense to me. "How many people has he done this to?"

"That's where things get complicated on my end. You may recall that Logan, Angela and Mr. Kimaru infiltrated my office some years ago?" I nodded, remembering the days leading up to it. "Well, they discovered that I did have a bit of a…rodent problem, in the form of an employee who was purging certain things from the active Weapon X and Department K files." At my look of confusion, he explained. "Department K is the Canadian branch of the Weapon Plus program, which was integrated with the U.S. branch shortly before the Weapon X phase." I nodded again and motioned for him to continue. "Much of what he was purging related to the true identity of the Director, who we now know is our former President. I have since discovered that he was also purging records that dealt with their so-called 'recruits'. But if I had to make a guess, between the mutants in his control and the Sentinels that are still out there, he has enough to begin wiping out mutantkind inside of five years."

"Dear God," I breathed, a cold ball forming in the pit of my stomach. "But mutants are finally being accepted, the X-Men are called directly to assist with any number of problems. How can he get away with this?"

Terrence looked away and I got a deep sense of shame from him. "That's the thing, you see. When President Roosevelt buried the BCI, Weapon Plus got buried with it. I don't know how, unless there was someone high enough to get it added to the Presidential order, but there is only one government official who knows either thing exists and if he says anything to anyone – even the President – it's considered an act of treason."

"Terrence, I am so very sorry about all of this, but please believe me when I say that Logan and Angela would have never done what they did if they'd known this."

"Which is the reason for my visit, as you know. Charles, what in the name of God are they doing back with Weapon X? Don't they know the risks they're taking? They have telepaths in there that can rip their minds to shreds and put it back together any way they want! You, the X-Men, your students…they are all in terrible danger and for what?"

"I assure you, we are as safe as I could manage. Before they left, I buried the past ten years deep in the part of their brains that controls their feral side. I doubt even their most powerful telepath will be able to break through that. But to make sure no one suspected anything, I fabricated memories to layer over the empty places, so they believe this is nothing but X-Men headquarters and that I only take on a few mutants through the year who need to learn control. They also believe that Storm, Atlas and their daughter are all dead."

"Why on earth would you do that to them?"

"Because they asked me to." He stared at me for a long time, as though he couldn't believe what he'd just heard. Finally, he excused himself and made a quick call on his cell phone, explaining that he wasn't going to be back to the office for at least a day and to cancel his appointments. Once he was finished, he put the phone away with an apology and I gave him a curious look. "Is there something else you need?"

"Yes, quite a lot actually and I'm not leaving until you tell me everything."

"Of course. I'll have a room prepared for you right away. In the meantime, would you like some tea?"

It took the rest of that evening and most of the next day to explain it all, but he finally left, satisfied with his answers. But the last thing he said was "I hope you – _all_ of you – know what you're doing. Wolverine and Hellcat were a menace before. Let's hope they don't become one again."

No one hopes that more than I.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Remy)

It has been a rough time of it for us here at de safe house, but especially for _la petit belle_. There are days where she still laughs an' seems like any other little girl, but other days her sadness is so heavy that it weigh on all of us. Marie, she try very hard to keep her busy an' so does Sam with de sculpting, but there is only so much we can all do. It hurt Remy so to see her dis way, but even dis Cajun find it hard to keep things bright.

We send messages back to de school to let de Professor know we all still okay. He tell us that Monsieur Bennington had come to visit, that he know what Logan an' Angela do. He seem very unhappy wit' it, but he trust that everyone know what dey doing. But there be days Remy look at Genevieve an' I wonder if maybe we should take a chance an' go home anyway. It not seem right, she being so far away from her friends an' family, but we made a promise to keep her safe an' Remy will keep it 'til his dyin' day if he have to. Of course, Remy hope it won' get dat far.

It almost be Genevieve's birthday an' Remy t'ink dat be why she always so sad. Sometimes, she say she have dreams of her _mère _an' _père_ in far-off places, so she know dey be all right. But she also dream of dem doing bad t'ings an' those nights she wake up screaming an' beggin' for dem to come back. Remy ask her if she ever see dem together again, but she say she not seen dat yet. Dis is not somet'ing we all wish to hear, for it mean that we may not go home for a very long time.

Storm be feeling a bit under de weather for a few days, but she say it will get better. She say she just tired an' worried about her friends, but she still send a message to Dr. McCoy, just in case. If she really be sick, Remy know not what to do. We cannot risk going to a doctor, but if she don' get better we have no choice. She still waiting for a message back, but we don' know what he can do for her when we all so far away.

But dis Cajun know dat no matter how bad t'ings be right now, it will be all right in de end.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

_Dear Diary,_

_Two months, three weeks, two days and four hours since mom and dad sent me away._

_I'm gonna be ten in about three more weeks. I was hoping everything would be normal again by the time that happened, but I guess not. It makes me really sad to be away from everyone, but especially mom and dad. I miss them so much it hurts inside and I know everyone here gets that, but they can't change it. That just makes me mad, that there's nothing anyone can do, no magic wand to wave and make it all better. But Uncle Remy gave me an idea, even if he doesn't know he did._

_See Diary, before we went away, Uncle Charles was trying to teach me how to make my dreams easier to see, kind of like how you can use the remote for the DVD player to change the angles and stuff. He said that if I can learn how to do that (he had a funny name for it, like lucy dreaming but I know that's not right), then maybe I can see things in my dreams that are really important, see the stuff my dreams are trying to show me. He said he thinks I might only have a dream a couple times, cuz then I'll have seen what it was trying to tell me all along and my mind won't need to show them to me again. So, I've been trying to do that, but what I'm really trying to do is make it show me how old I'll be when mom and dad come back. I figure if I can see that, then anything else that I dream about will be ok because I'll know I didn't lose them forever._

_Cuz you know what? That's what I'm the most scared about, that they'll never come back again. Aunt Marie tells me not to worry about that, cuz they love me more than anything in the whole world and that all the stuff they're doing is to keep me safe. But how can I ever be really and truly safe if they aren't here with me? They are the strongest and bravest people in the whole world and I'm not just saying that cuz they're my mom and dad, but cuz they can keep me safer than anyone else._

_I guess maybe that's why they're so far away and doing the stuff they're doing, cuz they know it'll keep the bad men away from me. But I promise, Diary, that if they don't come back and get me by the time I'm all grown up and an X-Man, I'm gonna find the bad men myself and get my mom and dad back. I know they would do that for me if the bad men got me, so I'll do it for them if I have to. I don't know how, since I can probably die like normal people, but I'll figure out a way._

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Logan)

Colonel Sidowski was shocked to see us back when we said we'd be back. I don't know what she expected, but at least we proved a few things to her. One, if we say something will take two days or less, then it'll take two days or less. Two, if you want something done right, you send us. And three, we were truly back with them, no telepathic suggestions or conditioning needed. I think it was the third one that threw her for a loop.

Of course, other people were harder to convince, especially our "competition". Demon and Vulture each cornered us and demanded to know why we had so much luck when they'd tried to find a way to get him for months without a single break. We just shrugged and told them we were the best and left it at that, which Vulture seemed to accept without question. Demon, on the other hand, wasn't so easily swayed.

"Come on man, it couldn't have been that easy," he said, with a tone that reminded me so much of Scott I almost did a double-take, "we used the trackers too and it didn't help us for shit."

"Yeah, we know," I replied, starting to get irritated, "that's why we went, remember?"

"Hey, is it our fault the dude had tons of guards all over? By the time we'd get through them, he was already out the back door."

I shook my head in disbelief. "Didja say 'we'? As in both o' ya?" He nodded and I didn't even try to hold back my laughter. "Dumbass, there's a reason we go in pairs. One takes care o' the main objective, the other one's backup." I leaned into him with a smirk. "Or don't they teach that at Weapon X assassin school anymore?" He scowled and gave me the finger before walking away, which just made me laugh harder. I made a mental note to kill him personally someday.

About three days after we got back from Beijing, a nameless corporal appeared at our door with a stack of file folders, all of which were different jobs that the Director wanted done. Some of them were expected - kill this or that guy for whatever half-assed reason the Director could come up with – while others were less clear in their purpose. "Why on earth would he want us to go to all the trouble of breaking into a Russian military base and plant bugs?" Angela asked from her seat on the bed, tossing the file aside. "Didn't anyone tell him the Cold War is over?"

"Dunno darlin'," I said absently, scanning another file, "maybe he wants to start it up again."

"Why, so we can go back to staring at each other in a hostile manner?"

I chuckled and set the file down. "Well, if I'm the one doin' the starin', maybe it'll actually mean somethin' this time."

"That's just because you have the 'don't fuck with me' scowl down to an art form, lover." She picked up another file and flipped it open, paging through the papers and photos in there. "Ya know, a lot of the stuff we did before didn't make sense, but this is just ridiculous."

"Whattaya mean?"

"This one here? He wants us to find this guy, Roger Nesbit, break into his office and plant a bunch of fake documents, then break into his house and install kiddy porn on his computer." She tossed the file down in disgust. "Besides being a total waste of our talents, there's just some lines I won't cross and kiddy porn would be it."

"What line o' work's he in?" I asked, just as confused as she was.

"Uh, looks like he's with some kind of media conglomerate." She looked at me with a smirk. "Think they were at a party once and this guy spilled his drink all over the Director?"

"Sounds 'bout right. Guy doesn't seem to need much reason to have someone taken down."

"See, that's what doesn't make sense! Now if it were military leaders or launch codes or hell, even a nosy reporter, I'd get that. But what the hell do these things have to do with taking out mutants?"

"You do remember that askin' why is a good way to get sent back to sensory dep, right? We're the ones who smile an' nod an' do what we're told." I picked up another file and started paging through it.

"But _we_ know the truth here, even if those fuckups they've been using don't. We know for a fact that he wants us to kill our own kind, his own mutant army to kill all the mutants. But he can't kill _us_ – well, at least you – so why all this stupid shit?"

"Ya know that ain't true Angela. He knows how to kill me, he has to, just like he knows how to keep you dead."

"We're just never gonna be able to do what we need to do if he keeps giving us all these bullshit assignments."

"Maybe we should take a coupla these dumbass ops, see if there's more beneath the surface on 'em."

She tossed a file on her discard pile and stood up. "Why? At this point, we'd be more useful as tour guides."

I chuckled again, then something caught my eye in the file I was looking at. I peered at it closely, not sure I was seeing it correctly, but I was. I looked up at her. "Darlin', I think we should take this one."

"Why, what is it?"

I removed the little yellow sticky note that had caught my eye and handed it to her. "Now we know he really does know everythin'." I said.

_My friends,_

_I don't know what you're doing or why you're doing it, but if you would be so kind as to meet with me while in the process of completing this mission, I believe I can be of great help to you. Burn this note._

_T.B._

She glanced up with a look of mixed confusion and concern. "How does he do that?"

I shrugged. "My guess is he's got someone inside here, someone only answers to him. And now, he wants to meet with us."

"What's the mission? Could we get away with it?"

I looked back through the file, forming a summary as I did so. "Looks pretty straightforward. Break into an industrial complex in DC, steal some files, plant a keylogger on the CEO's computer with satellite uplink."

"Sounds simple enough." She handed the note back to me and I lit it up and set it in the ashtray as I handed her the file. She scanned the contents quickly, then chewed on her lip thoughtfully. "Yeah, I think this'll work. We'll take it." She set the file down on the table and slid into my lap. "Wonder how he'll set up the meet."

"Knowin' him, he'll just waltz into our hotel room disguised as a room service guy." I leaned in and kissed her, sliding my hand up her back. "Wanna tell the Colonel now or later?"

"Later." She whispered and kissed me again. "I'm feeling insubordinate."

God, I love my wife.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We met with Sidowski the next day after the morning briefing and told her we'd take the DC job. We told her we'd need three days tops, which was only so that we could squeeze in a meeting with Bennington. During the next week as we prepped for the op, I tried like hell to figure out who the inside guy could be. But the only scent that I'd caught on the sticky note was a particularly bad aftershave that about half the guys stationed here used, so it wasn't really all that helpful. I figured that the guy had done that on purpose to mask his own scent, not wanting to compromise his own cover as the loyal Weapon X soldier. I didn't blame him and I'm sure that Bennington had told him everything he needed to know about us, so it was almost certain that he was never in the same room as either one of us. But I was actually glad that he had a guy inside here - it would make our ultimate goal much easier to achieve - but I still wondered who he or she was.

At any rate, the Colonel was thrilled that we accepted the assignment. Apparently, they were looking for evidence that this guy had acquired certain advances to his technology through someone connected with Weapon X. All we had to do was search for specific files, then plant the keylogging program and satellite uplink so the company's main computer could be monitored from a remote location until they could find the name of the guy selling the secrets in the first place. The only thing that bothered us was how any of these things were connected to the Director's ultimate goal of mutant extermination – except for his own little army, of course – but maybe there was something in these files we were missing. It would take time to go through them all in detail, but since all we had were third and fourth generation copies, we could do that any time we wanted.

Our cover for this op was a couple junior executives from one of the suppliers for the company, which specialized in computer components for everything from GPS units for cars to navigations systems for commercial airliners. However, in recent months, some of the technology they were using was previously considered proprietary hardware for military use, specifically for Weapon X and the Sentinel program. The downside was that there were hundreds of people involved in those departments at the level needed to get this info, so it was impossible to narrow it down, which is where we came in.

Since we were staying in the U.S. for this, we took a private jet to Dulles, which allowed us to bypass airport security. We were also provided a car, which looked like it came from a national rental agency on paper, but was really one of our own (just in case anything happened to it). We had a pair of adjoining rooms in a downtown hotel that was part of a national chain, reserved under the names Thomas McQueary and Stephanie Essex. As expected, Angela hated it. "Sounds like a damned porn star," she grumbled, which just made me laugh. Of course, karma caught up with me when I found out I had to wear a damned suit to our meeting with the CEO, which made her laugh. Two decades of avoiding anything even close to formal wear and now I was stuck in a suit of some flavor for the second time in a year.

Even though we weren't technically a couple on this jaunt, we still took full advantage of our more or less complete alone time by falling into bed as soon as the door closed. It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't have the feral instincts we do and we've been accused of being a couple of sex addicts more than once, but the fact is that just a tiny hint of my woman's scent is enough to drive me wild. I'm sure I don't have to go into detail about the five days every month where she won't let me anywhere near her, but they are the five longest days I have to live through. As soon as that sixth day hits though, all bets are off. What it really boils down to is the animal, that thing that I normally think of as this bad thing that takes over when I'm angry. It does have a good side, the one that wants to mate and make as many little copies of me as it possibly can and that's the reason why we can't keep our hands off each other.

A few hours later, after we'd showered and gotten a snack, we went over the mission one more time. Stage one was the meeting with the CEO, a man named Keith French, where we would scope the scene and confirm that the entry and exit strategy would work in fact as well as it looked according to the schematic. It would also allow us to confirm the locations of the main computer and the hard copy files we needed to get out of there, which could shave precious seconds off the amount of time that would be spent in there. When getting caught is not an option, every second counts.

Stage two was actually getting in and retrieving the files, planting the program and the uplink, all of which needed to be done in a very narrow window. Based on our information, we would have less than fifteen minutes to do all of it. The program would be the quickest part, since it only needed to go on the one computer, but the uplink needed to go on the mainframe, which was in a different part of the executive offices. It was a pretty nifty little device, disguised as a simple printer cable. It still functioned like a normal printer cable should, but it also had a chip inside that would send information to the mainframe back in Nevada via satellite whenever certain keywords were used. I'm not exactly computer stupid, but the inner workings of stuff like this is pretty well beyond me, though I'm sure that Buzz could have explained it in about fifteen seconds. I didn't care about it, though; we just needed to plant it and get the hell out of there.

Stage three was the getaway, which is where Angela and I were in disagreement. I said that I should be the one to go in, because she got to do that on the last op, which would leave her as my driver. She argued that since she was smaller, she would have an easier time getting in and out without detection. We finally decided to solve it the traditional way, with her providing the quarter. I won.

"I swear you're a latent telekinetic," she complained as she pocketed the coin. "Every time we do this, you win."

I grinned and pulled her into my arms. "I'm not, I promise," I said as I tried to kiss her, but she turned away. "Aw, c'mon darlin', don't be like this. It's only fair. And hey, ya get to drive."

"Oh yeah, big fun there, driving the getaway sedan." She frowned up at me. "Why can't they give us a getaway Camaro or a getaway Mustang for a change?"

"Ya know why as well as I do. Sports cars are too flashy an' memorable. Sedans all look the same, no matter who makes 'em."

"I know. That's why I hate them."

Her frown morphed into an incredibly cute pout, just like the one Evie used to give us when she wanted something and my heart clenched in my chest. I let her go and turned away. "Please, don't look at me like that," I mumbled.

"But I want the fun part!" Again, she sounded so much like our daughter and it was suddenly getting hard to breathe. "I'm better at this stuff than you are."

I rounded on her and she took a step back, eyes wide. "Just fuckin' stop it, all right?" I snapped. "Don't…just don't do that anymore."

"Logan, I'm sorry," She whispered. "I didn't know it meant that much to you."

"It's not that." I looked down and clenched my eyes against a sudden burning that threatened to become tears. "You just…you look an' sound like Evie an' I can't take it, all right? So cut it out."

"Oh gods, I had no idea. I'm so sorry." She laid a hand on my arm, but I shook it off. "Logan, please…"

"Just leave me alone." She stood there for a bit, then quietly left for the adjoining room. I heard the connecting door close softly, followed by the sound of her collapsing on the messy bed in there, sobbing quietly. I sat down heavily in front of the laptop computer we were using to plan, holding my head in my hands. Evie had been my hope for the future, living proof that I could do more than just hurt people. She'd been the brightest spot in my life and now that light was gone forever. It was that cruel twist of fate, the fact that she'd died in the very jet that was supposed to save her that had driven Angela and I to the dark place we were in now. We wanted other children, God only knows how much, but neither one of us were ready for it yet. Our grief for our lost daughter still felt too new and it was times like this where I wondered if it would ever stop hurting to think about her.

I didn't even realize I was crying too until I heard the sound of the tears hitting the toe of my shoe. I leaned back in the chair and scrubbed my face in an attempt to erase them, but they kept coming. Part of me was still wishing that I'd gone with her, that I'd died in that crash too because anything was better than this horrible empty ache that my healing factor could never eliminate. I just sat there alone in that hotel room, wishing like hell that I could go back and do something differently, even though I knew it was futile. But if there's one thing that I can't stand, it's feeling helpless and finding out that the jet went down and killed my daughter along with two of my closest friends had left me feeling just that way.

I don't know how long I sat there, alone with my pain, but I finally realized that it was quiet in the adjoining room. I hadn't meant to hurt Angela, but I'd gone and let myself get swallowed by my own pain without thinking that she was probably hurting too. I wiped my face off again and took a couple deep breaths to pull myself together before crossing softly to the connecting door. She hadn't locked it, so I eased it open and peeked inside. She was curled up with one of the pillows, the moonlight slanting in through the window. I made my way across the room in its dim glow and lowered myself next to her carefully. "Angela," I whispered, "darlin', I'm sorry." I slid my arm around her waist and pulled her close, breathing in her scent mixed with that of her tears. "I'm an asshole."

She rolled over and buried her face in my chest and I felt her shaking with new sobs. "Logan, I miss her so much. Was I wrong? Should we have kept her with us or evacuated her with the other kids? Is it all my fault 'cause it was my idea?"

"No! Angela, don't think like that. It was a stupid accident, that's all."

"But what if it wasn't?" She looked up at me, her eyes fever bright. "What if it happened because she was supposed to be taken away from us, but I tried to change it and she got taken away anyway?"

"Darlin', you can't blame yourself for this! I don't blame you, not even a little bit." I swallowed hard on that. Was that true, or did some small part of me think the same things? I shook my head to clear that thought out of there. "Evie didn't see everythin' that happened, just the invasion part. There was no way we coulda known."

"But we'll never know for sure, will we?" She sniffed and looked down, as though no longer able to hold my gaze. "For the rest of our cursed fucking lives, we'll never really know."

"No, I s'pose we won't." I whispered and kissed the top of her head. We didn't say anything else to each other for the rest of the night – what was there to say? We gave each other what silent comfort we could until sleep finally came over us.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We had our meeting with French the next morning at ten, which gave us something else to focus on besides our grief. We left the hotel at nine-fifteen, both of us dressed in our professional best. Angela was grumbling the whole time because she had to wear both a skirt and high heels, but I thought she looked stunning. I felt like a complete idiot in my suit and it took Angela almost an hour to tame my hair into something that looked a bit more corporate. The worst part was that I had to shave off my sideburns, which would only last for about an hour or so before they started to come back, which meant I had to stash an electric shaver in the briefcase I had to carry so I could give my face another once over when we got there. The last time I'd had to do something like that was back in the Alkali Lake days, so I was a little surprised at how I looked without the whiskers.

Angela, on the other hand, loved it. "Wow, look at you," She purred, running her hand down my face. "And I thought you were irresistible before."

"Yeah, whatever," I grumbled, "at least they'll grow back."

"I don't know if I want them to." She pulled me down for a kiss, which threatened to turn into a lot more, so I pulled away, which made her scowl. "You're no fun."

"I'm plenty o' fun, but we got work to do. C'mon." She pulled away from me, her expression a little hurt and turned to the door. I didn't mean to be so short with her, but I was still seeing and hearing my daughter in my wife and it hurt me. I didn't want to hurt her in turn, but I couldn't seem to help myself. I grabbed her by the arm and turned her back to face me, gathering her into my arms. "Shit Angela, I'm sorry. I keep bein' an asshole."

She nodded, but wrapped her arms around my waist. "It's all right Logan. I understand." The worst part? She really did understand and would probably forgive me for anything I said or did.

The meeting was just as boring as I thought it would be. We had copies of documents and contracts, all looking perfectly legitimate, and we'd drilled ourselves for a week on the lingo and inner workings of the company we supposedly represented. We started out with one of French's assistants, who gave us a quick tour of the place, then settled us into French's office with cups of expensive coffee. A few minutes later, the CEO himself showed up and we launched into the spiel we'd prepared. We "negotiated" with him for about half an hour, coming to a tentative "agreement" in the end, which would need to be approved by our bosses, naturally. After a few more minutes of small talk, we shook hands all around and got the hell out of there.

Once in the car, Angela kicked off her shoes and groaned. "Gods, I can't stand undercover. I'll take a nice invasion any day over all of this." She shrugged out of her dark blue linen jacket and unbuttoned the top of her silk blouse. "I can't wait to get into real clothes again."

I raised an eyebrow at that. "What, the fatigues? They ain't the most attractive clothes, ya know."

"Maybe not, but they're way more comfy than this." She rubbed her feet for a bit. "I can't stand this stuff, it's so not me. I swear the best thing that ever happened to women was pants becoming acceptable attire." I chuckled and she slapped me on the shoulder. "It's true! You have NO idea how much it sucks to have to wear a dress all the time because anything else is "unladylike". I'm no lady, never have been." She looked over at me with a smirk. "Don't tell me you're loving that suit, 'cause I can't tell you're not."

I shot a glare over to her. "No, I'm not. I hate this fuckin' thing. Thinkin' 'bout shreddin' it when I get back to the hotel."

"You can't do that! You might need it again."

"Not if I can help it. I'm with ya on the whole invasion thing." We drove on in silence for a few minutes, which was interrupted by the shrill trilling of a cell phone. "Did you bring a phone with you?"

"No, I didn't." She opened up her briefcase and sure enough, tucked into one of the pockets, was a slim black phone. She flipped it open warily. "Yes?" She snapped, then waited a few seconds. "Ok." She broke the connection and looked at me with wide eyes. "Wanna have lunch? I'm thinking picnic."

My eyebrow shot up again. "Dontcha wanna change clothes first?"

"No, I'm starving. Let's just get lunch. I'm thinking somewhere by the Vietnam Memorial might be nice." She gave me a significant look and I just nodded. Our meeting with Bennington was set.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

As it stood, mentioning the Vietnam Memorial had been a smokescreen on the off chance that the car was bugged. We did get some lunch at a deli, but instead of heading to the massive wall of names, she led me towards the base of the Washington Monument, which I guess I should have expected. We sat down on a bench and started on our sandwiches, all the while looking around for our old friend. About ten minutes later, a slender blond in a smart red suit approached us. "Mr. Logan? Miss Rex? I'm here for a mutual friend."

I looked at her impassively, but Angela's the one who spoke. "It's Mrs. Logan now."

The woman dipped her head. "My apologies, we didn't know." She shifted her gaze across the reflecting pool for a moment, then turned back to us. "Mr. Bennington wants me to escort you to the visitor's entrance and I suggest we do that soon. You're being followed, though right now they think I'm just asking for the time."

"An' why do they think that?" I asked, instantly suspicious.

She just smiled. 'Terrence isn't the only mutant in the BCI.' I heard in my mind and she smiled. "Meet me on the other side of the obelisk in three minutes."

She walked away and I glanced at Angela. "Well, it's always somethin', ain't it?"

"Curiouser and curiouser," she murmured. We finished our lunch and tossed our trash in a nearby can, then went around to the other side of the monument.

The woman was waiting there for us and as soon as we came up to her, she took us each by the elbow. Angela struggled briefly, but the woman didn't break her hold. "Don't move, I can't shield you from them if I'm not touching you."

"Whattaya talkin' 'bout?" I growled.

"I'm a telepath, but I can sort of bend light, kind of like a shield. They can't see us, but it only works on me and whatever I'm touching. So don't let go." She hurried us along down the sidewalk to a small line of shops and storefront firms. She ushered us into one of them, the lettering on the door saying they were Baker, Campbell and Imlay, attorneys at law. Once inside, she let us go. "Sorry about that, but we couldn't let your shadows see where we were going."

Angela looked around and nodded at the door. "I like that, it's clever."

"We know," the woman said with a smile, "but the best part is that this really is a law office." She held out her hand and we shook it. "Rebecca Imlay, at your service. Come with me, please." She led us further into the office, past a receptionist who was arguing with someone on the phone and a couple other doors that I presume led to the offices of Baker and Campbell. She pushed open another door and we found ourselves in a storage area with a freight elevator in the back. We boarded the elevator, which didn't appear to go down any further than the street level we were on, but since this was a front for the BCI, I guessed correctly that we were wrong. A few seconds later, it came to a stop and opened into a plain concrete hallway. "Sorry about the less than pleasant surroundings, but this was the best place we could hide the visitor's entrance," She explained.

"I would think as a secret agency that you wouldn't get many visitors in the first place," Angela commented dryly.

"We don't, not really." Rebecca said. "We use this entrance for recruits, but even they don't get this far until we're ready for them to sign the contract." She led us through the corridor to a wide set of metal doors and pushed one open, exposing the carpeted corridors that we'd only seen in the dark before. She turned to us and smiled. "I'd take you to his office, but I've been told you know the way."

Angela turned to hide a smirk and I coughed. "Uh, yeah we do. Thanks."

"My pleasure, Mr. Logan. Mr. Bennington will call me when it's time for you to leave." She dipped her head again and walked off down the halls.

The offices were much different during the day, people dashing back and forth on errands of all types, others having hushed conversations on phones or with each other, dozens of people, all of whom had been recruited into the BCI for the sole purpose of protecting the country and its people. No one gave us a second glance as we made our way through the warren of corridors, not until we got as far as the private offices at the other end of the complex. Once there, a beefy guy roughly the size of Texas stopped us and a woman joined him to pat us down for weapons. I'm sure they both knew everything they needed to know about us, but they were just following their own protocols before letting us in to see the man whose life's work was this bureau.

The huge guy led us down to the office and knocked on the door. Bennington called out for us to enter and he opened the door and motioned us inside, closing it softly behind us. Bennington crossed from his desk, his hand out and I shook it before he turned to Angela and gave her a quick, friendly hug. "Miss Imlay tells me congratulations are in order for the two of you," He said with a smile.

I wrapped an arm around her shoulders and smiled. "Yeah well, I kinda sprung it on her, but we decided to do it before we left the mansion."

His expression changed subtly and he sighed. "Yes, I heard. In fact, that's why I asked to meet with you." He motioned to the chairs in front of his desk. "Please, have a seat."

He went and sat behind his desk as we made ourselves comfortable, then opened a folder that was sitting in front of him. "Before I begin, I wanted to let you know that I've already spoken to Charles about your…intentions and the reasons behind them." He looked at us sympathetically. "I'm very sorry for your loss."

Angela swallowed hard and looked down and I sighed. "Thank you," I said quietly around a lump in my throat. "But if you called us here to try an' talk us outta this, you're too late."

"No, nothing of the sort. I just wanted to assure myself that _you_ know what you're doing."

I snorted. "Do ya really think we'd have gone back there if we didn't?"

"I know that grief can make people do irrational things, terrible things that they normally wouldn't do. In the case of regular people, that's bad enough. But you two?" He leaned forward and his expression hardened. "Don't make me come after you. I already know you were responsible for Beijing. I know they're going to make you do other things just as bad if not worse than that and it's _my_ job to protect this country and its people."

"Mr. Bennington, if this is some kind of threat…" Angela started, but he cut her off.

"No, Angela, it's not. I am not the enemy here, I want you to know that. I realize that the two of you are nothing more than tools to the Director, pawns in his game. _He_ is the enemy here."

"So what are you trying to say?"

"The Director has been using Department K – and by extension Weapon X and Project Wideawake – to fulfill a useless vendetta." He settled back into his chair, his hands folded in front of him. "Once upon a time, the Director's father was killed by a drunk driver. During the autopsy of the driver, it was discovered that he was also a mutant. Not a very powerful one, but that didn't matter. As far as the Director was concerned, the fact that he was drunk was secondary to the whole matter. So, at the tender age of thirteen, he vowed to remove the mutant menace from the face of the planet. His entire career, both military and political was devoted to getting himself into a position to make that vow a reality."

"So why would he spend so much time an' money on people like us?" I asked.

"The Director is a fool, but he's not stupid. He knows that the best way to fight fire is with fire. A large portion of his early years with Department K had been spent doing research on the powers and capabilities of mutants. Once it became apparent that there were mutants out there that could eliminate any normal human opposition at the speed of thought, he saw no other alternative. So, he made the decision to acquire as many powerful mutants as he could, to create an army under his control to eliminate their own kind."

"With all due respect, we already know this," Angela said dryly. "We also know that he's employed everything from blackmail to brainwashing to outright torture to ensure the so-called loyalty of his troops. But as far as we can tell, he hasn't actually employed us in that capacity."

"I know and that's where the real problem lies." He opened a folder that was sitting on the blotter in front of him. "Over the decades, many people have discovered small discrepancies in everything from budgeting to equipment requisitions, which in turn led to investigations that came dangerously close to uncovering the truth about Department K. Thomas Marshall, for example, the gentleman you assassinated in Beijing?" I glanced at Angela and we both narrowed our eyes. "Yes, I know what you were told about why he was eliminated, but the truth is that he was beginning to question the amount of money that was being attributed to his project versus the amount he was actually spending."

"I don't understand," Angela said, clearly confused.

"It's simple, my dear. The Director is using certain legitimate projects as a means of laundering money."

"So he arranges for certain projects to get more money allotted to 'em that he can skim off the top for his own work," I said with a frown. "An' since government spendin' is all fucked up anyway, no one ever notices."

"Exactly. But Mr. Marshall discovered what he thought was a clerical error, which led to an internal investigation, which ultimately led to the two of you being sent to take care of him." He paged through the file absently, scanning the contents quickly as though he was familiar with them. "In fact, I would say that over ninety percent of the people that have been eliminated by the main Weapon X operatives were killed because they were simply getting too close."

"So what do you expect us to do?" Angela asked and there was a note of something like panic in her voice, something I hadn't heard often. "Refuse the jobs? Let them go?"

"Not at all." He closed the file and set it aside. "It is important that no one suspects you know this. By now, you should already have gained enough trust that they won't perform random telepathic scans on you. I am also certain that you know I have an insider at your base." We nodded. "It is my belief, as well as that of others on this particular project here in the BCI that the Director is close to implementing the next phase of Weapon X, which is to inject other mutants he has acquired with the artificial healing factor he extracted from you."

"Wonderful," I said under my breath with more than a little sarcasm.

Bennington nodded. "Yes, Mr. Logan. Most of those selected to go through the process are considered Class Four, with a few Class Three mutants whose powers were considered useful enough to justify putting them through the process."

"And by 'process', I'm sure you mean more than just injecting them with Logan's healing factor." Angela stated.

"Yes. The healing factor is simply phase one of the bonding process now. Those who survive it are put through phase two, which tests the level of the healing factor itself."

"Wait a minute," I said and leaned forward. "Are you sayin' that the healin' factor kills some o' the people he's injectin' with it?"

Bennington winced and sighed. "Yes, Mr. Logan, I am. Just like any other process that introduces foreign biological material into a person, there's a chance for rejection. Sometimes, the person injected rejects it the same way someone would reject an incompatible kidney, for example. In a few rare cases, the healing factor attacks the new host and destroys him or her from the inside. Altogether, perhaps fifteen to twenty percent of those injected with it have died because of it."

"An' o' those who survive, they don't all get the same level that I have?"

He shook his head. "No. Once the subject successfully accepts the healing factor, it adapts to the individual in ways that are still not clear to the project head. One thing they have discovered is that no one with a healing factor lower than level seven is likely to survive the final phase of the bonding process, which is the bonding itself."

"But there's older operatives with lower levels than that already."

"I know. The project head speculates that a natural healing factor is simply more efficient than the artificial one, which allowed those subjects to recover better. Of course, he's not positive, since he took over after you killed Dr. Cornelius, but that's what his research indicates."

I sighed and sat back in my chair. "So how many does he have ready?"

"Unknown. He spreads the work out amongst at least a dozen different bases. There were more, but you managed to destroy most of them before you rejoined them. My insider is also unsure how many non-feral mutants have been given the artificial healing factor, so we'll simply have to wait and see."

We sat in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes, each of us lost in our own thoughts. Personally, I was pissed as hell that Dr. Lee had more or less lied to me about the uses for my healing factor. He hadn't seemed like he was lying, but I wouldn't know for certain until I managed to corner him again. Finally, Angela broke the silence. "Mr. Bennington, you know none of this changes our position. We have to do what they want us to do if we're ever going to stop them."

"I know," he sighed. "But I assure you, unless circumstances dictate otherwise, I will not be coming after you. Just try your best to avoid taking jobs that will require you to kill anyone in the United States government. My insider will flag those for you in a way you won't be able to mistake for anything else. And if anything ever happens and you feel you need to get away before your mission is complete, please let him know."

"How are we s'posed to do that if we don't know who he is?" I asked.

"Oh, you know who he is, you've already met him." My eyebrows flew up so fast they almost collided with my hair and Bennington chuckled. "Do you recall a soldier named Grant from your first few weeks back?" We both nodded. "His first loyalty is to the country, second to me. We maneuvered him into Weapon X about five years ago in an attempt to gain enough of a foothold to insert more of our people into the program. But when he reported to me that there was an obsession with bringing in the two of you and your daughter…" he paused there for a heartbeat and I felt my own heart clench in my chest, "Well, let's just say that I felt it would be best if we waited to see how that played out. I'm glad I was right."

"An' you're sayin' that he'll get us outta there when we're ready?" Bennington nodded. "Okay then. Thank you." We all stood up and he pressed a button that called the beefy guy back into the office, and he escorted us back to the freight elevator that took us to street level. Once outside, I took Angela by the hand and we walked back to where we parked the car. She even let me drive without complaint, which was odd for her. I glanced over and saw she was chewing on her thumb claw, deep in thought. "Hey darlin', somethin' on your mind?"

She looked at me sideways and sighed. "I'll give him credit for what he told us, but he still knows something he _didn't_ tell us and I can't help but wonder what that is."

"True." I concentrated on the road, going over the conversation in my head. There weren't any glaring gaps, but she was right that he had kept something back. "But ya know he'd never do anythin' that would put us in harm's way."

"Yeah well I get the feeling that he'd sell out his own mother if she was a threat to the country. We're just a couple of people he considers friends."

"Whattaya think it is?"

"I don't know, but something tells me we won't like it very much when we find out."

I grunted in agreement, not knowing what to say. She was right, I knew she was, but without the missing piece, there was nothing we could do but hope it all played out all right in the end.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The rest of the op went off without a hitch. It was so simple, I probably could have done it blindfolded. We drove back to the hotel and fell into bed, where we made love until the sky was starting to turn gray. Neither one of us actually said the words, but it was our way of apologizing for causing each other so much pain the day before.

We slept for a few hours before driving back to Dulles and catching the plane back to Area 51. The Colonel debriefed us, never once giving any indication that she suspected our deviation from the planned operation when we met with Bennington. We know we had a tail; Imlay had told us as much, but the fact that we lost them didn't seem to make an impression on the Colonel at all and it never came up during the debriefing. Forty-five minutes later, she dismissed us and we returned to our quarters.

Much had been improved over those three days. Our hot water worked and some small cracks in the plaster had been repaired, making the room seem a little nicer by comparison. I fell back on the bed and sighed. "So, what's our next move darlin'?"

Angela curled up next me before answering. "Well, I suppose we have to come up with some way to step up the Director's agenda. Get him to transfer some of the newer operatives here or something."

"For what?"

"I don't know. Training purposes? There's no one in the whole organization better than we are and if he wants the new people to be as good as we are, he'll have to bring them here eventually."

I nodded. "Makes sense, but he's still got four other operatives here that can still do plenty."

"But not enough. So, our next job will be to prove to both him and the Colonel exactly how little they're capable of."

"An' how do you suggest we do that?"

"Simple. We'll find a job that requires more than two and take them with us."

I smiled and pulled her in for a kiss. She's got a devious mind, my wife. But I love it as much as the rest of her.

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**AN:** Ok...so updating at work takes FOREVER...between stupid callers, crazy callers, stupid AND crazy callers and people who just hang up, it's a royal pain in the ass...but, here it is, a bit later than planned but at least i made it...:) I'm again going to plead laziness and being tired and just give a huge THANK YOU to anyone who beta reads for me, just reads the story or reviews...:) If there's anything that needed answering in the reviews, i'll check it out when i get home and send you a PM...:)

**Ok now don't forget that if i get even one new reviewer, i'll IMMEDIATELY post a new chapter as soon as i get that review...otherwise, the next update won't happen before Thursday...:) So go ahead and hit that little button what says "go" and just say hello or something! (and yes, i have had a reviewer literally say "hello or something" and s/he got a chapter for it!)**


	6. Chapter 6

**Special Note:** Warning! Part of this chapter has NOT been beta'd! This is because i'm an airhead and somehow the second half got saved in a different folder and i just came across it a few days ago...that's why this update is a bit late, because i had to at least give it a thorough once-over before i posted it...i WILL be sending it to beta here shortly, but i figured i owed you guys an update, so i'll replace this with the beta'd version once i have it back...:)

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Chapter 6

(Storm)

When I wasn't feeling better in a week, I broke down and had Sam take me to the nearest urgent care center. I figured it was just a combination of the stress of the past few months coupled with the emotional upheaval that went with worrying about Logan and Angela doing what they were doing. But naturally, it couldn't be that simple. On the other hand, it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was when the doctor said he wanted to run a few tests. Twenty minutes later, he came back with a smile on his face and asked me how I felt about being pregnant.

Ecstatic comes to mind, along with scared to death. By the doctor's estimation, I was about three weeks along. He gave me the names of a few obstetricians, mentioning that they were all "mutant friendly". When I looked at him with a little shock, he just smiled and said he'd seen me on television before and knew who I was. That was just a touch embarrassing and I blushed when he mentioned it, but he reminded me that all patient-doctor stuff was confidential and he'd make sure that no one who didn't need to know would ever find out I was there. So, I took the list of doctors from him, along with a prescription for some vitamins and something for the nausea, then went back out to tell Sam the happy news.

To say _he_ was happy is the understatement of the century. I thought Logan had the corner on the proud papa market, but Sam made him look positively stoic by comparison. It took extreme effort to keep him from going out and buying all the baby stuff we'd ever need right that minute, but I managed to talk him out of it until I was feeling better. Still, as soon as we got back to the house and the others found out, the atmosphere lightened considerably. There was still a bit of a pall over everything, what with Evie missing her parents so much, but now there was something to celebrate and we threw ourselves into it.

Poor Evie. Her tenth birthday is just around the corner and her parents are going to miss it. But what worries me the most is how focused she's become with her gift training. I'm not as good at it as Charles, especially because her gift is a psychic one, but she's been pushing herself much harder than children much older than she is. Her effective range has gone from the ten or fifteen minutes she had at the beginning to almost fourteen hours. It's hard to test it, so we have her concentrate on one of us and write down what she sees without telling us, putting the date and time on the paper. Then, if what she saw happens, we make a note of the time. Her accuracy is improving too, which is remarkable. From what I understand, most precogs can't always predict things with complete accuracy, with the exception that the things they dream are pretty much always true. Conscious visions vary in their accuracy and Evie was no exception there. However, her errors were in the smaller details, while the overall vision was actually pretty much spot on. We reported her progress to the Professor and Hank, who were both understandably impressed.

I think the reason she's trying so hard is because she wants to see when Logan and Angela will be coming back. I don't want to discourage her, but I'm also afraid that she'll see things she's too young to understand. I'm no fool, I know what they have to be doing for those people, and I'm so afraid her next vision will be of her parents ankle deep in bodies and blood. How will we ever explain to her that they're doing what they're doing for her safety and ours? How can we make her understand that they haven't become bad people because of it?

But she's just as happy about the baby as I am. She's all excited about becoming an "aunt" and having a little one to take care of. She asked me if I wanted her to try and see if it was a boy or a girl, but I told her I wanted to be surprised. So she said if she finds out, she'll write it down but she won't tell me. I've really gotten to love this little girl like my own, but I really hope that Logan and Angela finish this soon. She puts up a good front, but I know her little heart breaks a little more every day. And mine breaks too, just watching her.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Kyro)

Professor Xavier has received word that Storm is expecting a baby. We are all very happy for her and Sam, though we miss them very much and wish they could be here. But life must go on, no matter how we feel about it personally.

The new school year will be starting very soon, with twenty new students who are not mutants attending for the first time in the history of the school. Twenty out of ninety-seven students – not many, but it's a start. None of those twenty will be required to take my defense class unless they really want to. No, that class and the strategy class taught by Medusa are for potential X-Men first and foremost. None of the normal human children will be permitted to take her class, but if they wish to join mine, I will not deny them. After all, they are the first to accept mutants as equals, so they may run into problems of their own out in the world.

Chasca and I are still together and I love her more every day. I sometimes think back to when I first arrived here, thinking that Angela was my intended mate. I still become angry when I think of the way that I was fooled into believing that and how I almost missed out on the real thing because of it. I owe a great debt to her and to Logan-san for helping me learn the truth of that, a debt I am not sure I will ever be able to repay. But I realized that my love is beginning to look older. Everyone else here does not see it, but they do not feel the passage of time the same way I do. She does not have lines in her face or silver in her hair, but I can see time catching up with her, while I look in the mirror every day and nothing changes. I am over forty years old, yet I look the same as I did all those years ago when Stryker first found me. I can feel time, but it does not touch me.

Another person who is beginning to worry me is the Professor. These past few months have been very hard on him and I know his constant worry about Angela and Logan-san has taken its toll. He has been meeting frequently with Dr. McCoy and of course no one knows why, but we have our suspicions. Ever since the Phoenix attacked him, he has complained of frequent headaches and we are all fearful that she did him some permanent damage. But the Professor insists he is just fine and there is nothing to worry. Still, he has asked Kitty Pryde to take over his freshman and sophomore physics classes to lighten his class load.

I fear that nothing will be right around here until Angela and Logan-san return.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

_Dear Diary,_

_Three months, one week, five days and seven hours since mom and dad sent me away._

_Aunt 'Roro is gonna have a baby. I get to be an aunt and it's so cool. Well, not a real aunt, but an aunt like Aunt 'Roro is my aunt. Are you confused yet? I hope not._

_I turn ten in ten days. Ha ha, isn't that funny? Ten in ten days. I wish mom and dad would be here, but I guess they have to finish what they started. Uncle Atlas is always telling me that it's important to do that, to finish what you start. A sculpture or a mission to save the world, it's all the same thing. So I'll finish my new sculpture and mom and dad will finish their mission to save the world. I'll be done first, but theirs will be bigger. Or something like that._

_I'm starting to see things better now. I can see further away, which is really cool. It's getting easier too, so I don't have to concentrate so hard, at first at least. The further away stuff gets, the harder it is to see, so the harder I have to think about it. But Uncle Charles told me a long time ago that stuff would get easier the harder I worked, which seemed kind of backwards at first, but now I get it. I have to work hard now so it'll be easy later. I wonder how many other kids figured that one out. Maybe Wendy, she's really smart, but some of the other kids in my class might not get it right away. Anyway, so I can see things better now._

_I've been dreaming again, stuff that happens at the school mostly. I think Uncle Charles is sick or something, he seems to be talking to Uncle Hank a lot lately. But I think he'll be all right. His head hurts a lot and he has Aunt Kitty taking some of his classes for him. At least, I hope he'll be all right. He's kind of old and stuff, so I'm worried about him._

_I dreamed about mom and dad again, too, and the bad men. I'm not sure, but I think they live underground now and I saw them with someone who looked like a bad man, but mom and dad were running with him and not away from him. There was lots of flashing lights and other people running all over. Dad has a little girl that he's carrying that looks a lot like him and mom has that red haired girl with her that I used to dream about before they sent me away. I don't know what it means, but I think it might be important, so I wrote it down in my vision diary. Maybe that's the day they get out of there. I just wish I could see all of us together again, so that I know how old I'll be when they get back. Then I'll know how long that will be._

_Miss you, mom and dad. I love you always and forever._

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Angela)

The rest of the DC mission went off without a hitch. Logan got into the complex, got the stuff out we needed, put the stuff in they wanted installed and got out without any problems. Pretty anti-climactic compared to our last mission, but that's probably for the best. Anyway, we decided to spend one last night there so we could have the quality alone time. It's not like it mattered anyway, since we had to stay and make sure all the uplinks and whatnot were functioning correctly. At least, that's what we were supposed to do. The reality involved a couple bottles of wine and very little clothing.

We gave our report as soon as we got back to base and so far as we could tell, they had no idea that we'd ever met with Bennington. But we did keep our eyes open for Grant. I now felt kind of bad about slashing his arm open that one day a few weeks after we got here, but I couldn't let anyone know that. He had his role to play, just as we had ours. It was nice knowing we had an ally in there, though, even if we couldn't acknowledge it.

Sidowski wanted us to go right back out on another mission, somewhere in Central America, but it coincided with Evie's birthday. We didn't tell her that at first, we just tried to get out of it by saying her other operatives needed the practice, but when she pushed the issue, Logan just snapped. He got right in her face and told her, in no uncertain terms, there was no fucking way we were going to spend that day in some godforsaken jungle killing people when we were still mourning our daughter. I'll give her some credit, she at least had the courtesy to look ashamed of herself and sent Demon and Vulture instead. As for us, we spent most of the day outside – with guards, of course, to make sure we didn't try to get away again – sitting on the side of a mountain with a couple bottles of whisky we found outside our door that morning. I don't know who left them there, but I'd bet it was Grant. We both cried a lot and our fairly discreet guards kept a respectful distance and paid the bare minimum of attention to us. I don't know if it was out of fear or genuine respect for our loss, but I don't really give a shit. It was a very hard day for us, but we got through it.

Demon and Vulture got back a week later, mission successful. It added weight to the talk we'd had with her before, that the two of them along with Asp and Tigress needed to "grow up" a little more before sending them out for anything that needed skill and finesse. We were also surprised by the arrival of two new "recruits", who were the first two people to come out of the new project that started with the artificial healing factor and ended with the bonding process.

Shatter's name pretty much explained his power – breaking stuff. The only things he couldn't break were adamantium, which is a good thing really, and diamond, the only substance harder than adamantium (though not by much). It would have sucked big time if his power could break adamantium, because him and Logan didn't get along at all. At any rate, it wasn't a matter of strength, because he couldn't lift more than your average human. No, his power was actually part projection, part psychic. His effective range was about fifteen feet, but that's plenty when you're in the field. All he had to do was concentrate on the specific object – or person – that he wanted to shatter, then when he was ready, he could release a focused burst of energy that would break the thing he wanted broken. It was unclear if there was an upper limit to the size or mass of what he could break, but that didn't really matter. Even if all he could do was shatter someone's skull at fifteen feet that was enough. The main drawback to his power was if he used it for too long, it physically drained him. The drain increased in direct relation to the size of the thing he was breaking – the larger the object, the greater the drain – but unless he was asked to break an entire mountain or a skyscraper, it didn't seem to be a major concern to the people in charge. Color me surprised.

Sylph was named after the air spirits of mythology, because that's what she could do – control air currents. From a gentle breeze to a focused blast, air was under her control. She could also generate a kind of cushion, allowing her to fly for short periods of time, but that was only secondary really. She could even draw all of the air out of an area of roughly twenty cubic feet and she didn't even need to be in the same room. Stick her in any kind of complex where the targets could be sealed in a room and she could suffocate them within minutes. Pretty impressive, all told.

Both of them had been given the artificial healing factor – Shatter was rated a seven point five, while Sylph was a seven – which technically put them above me on the scale. I wasn't sure how the new scale worked, except that it took the gradual poisoning from the adamantium into consideration. Apparently, Logan and I were the only ones not suffering from any long-term ill effects from the metal, whereas Asp, Tigress, Demon and Vulture were showing certain amounts of degeneration after all this time. Some of it was physical, in that their natural healing factors were becoming less efficient. It hadn't become debilitating yet, but it was speculated that within thirty years, it might just crap out on them altogether. Mental deterioration was less obvious, but since both Tigress and Vulture seemed pretty psycho in the first place, it's hard to say how far it would go. But other, more common metals had been linked to mental problems, so it wasn't too much of a stretch to imagine that adamantium would affect them mentally as well. It was too soon to tell if Shatter and Sylph would suffer any ill effects.

At any rate, they were assigned to Logan and I for training. I don't know if the Colonel was still giving us time out of the field because of Evie's birthday or if she'd finally figured out that if you wanted the best out of someone, they had to be trained by the best, but we were being kept in-house for at least three months while we worked with the kids. And that's really what they were, kids, at least to us. Shatter was all of twenty-two years old and Sylph only a year older. But they'd already been worked over by the telepaths and probably conditioned with a combination of other tortures, so they were already pretty hard by the time they were assigned to us. However, like anyone else in their early twenties, they felt invincible. It was our job to beat that out of them.

We decided to train them separately at first. I took Shatter and Logan took Sylph because they both needed to learn some important lessons. She needed to realize that not of all her opponents were going to be fazed by her power. Throw anything short of a nuke at Logan and he'll keep coming until you put him into a coma. Shatter on the other hand needed to learn that the female of the species is deadlier than the male. Considering that he topped me by more than a foot and at least seventy pounds, it was going to be a hard lesson for him.

We were in one of the training rooms, a featureless space except for a single bench to one side and a large mat on the floor. I walked in after breakfast and Shatter was already there, doing a little shadowboxing. He'd left the door open (his first offense in my eyes – doors make noise when they open and can alert you to the presence of an enemy), so I slipped inside and made a note of the cameras in the four corners near the top of the twelve-foot ceiling. He also had his back to the door (his second offense – always keep doors at least in your peripheral vision, in case you miss the sound of the door opening), which gave me the perfect opportunity to get within five feet of him. Finally, he was grunting and growling as he boxed his invisible opponent (his third offense – not only did it mask the sound of my approach, but would have alerted an enemy to his presence), so it was funny when I kicked him in the back of the knee and he went down like a bag of rocks.

To his credit, he sprang to his feet in a defensive crouch right away, but I was already out of his immediate reach, my arms crossed. "Sloppy, Shatter. I could have killed five times by the time you knew I was here."

He looked me up and down with a mixture of disbelief and appreciation. "Yeah right. Little thing like you? I could take you with one hand tied behind my back."

I chuckled and walked over to him. "If I had a nickel for every time someone said that to me, I'd have more money than the Vatican." I stalked all around him, taking his measure, before stopping in front of him again and uncrossing my arms. "Here's the rules. Number one, no powers. You're here to learn how to get by without them."

"Why should I do that?"

"Because you might find yourself in a position someday where using them could be as damaging to you as they are to whoever or whatever it is you're after. You also might find yourself against someone who is immune to your power or has a similar one and can cancel you out. Not to mention, you might overtax your power and it'll crap out on you at a very inconvenient time. Last of all, I don't have a projection power and in here, we'll keep it fair."

He snorted. "Yeah whatever. Why didn't they give me Wolverine?"

"Because Sylph has to learn that not all fights are fair."

"And that's what you do? Teach how to fight fair?"

"No, I teach how to fight, period. Neither one of you will go into the field until we give the go ahead for that and even then, it'll be with us until we decide you're ready to go solo."

"I already know how to fight. I doubt you can teach me anything useful."

"We'll see." I dropped into a defensive crouch and slid out my claws. "Today, all I want you to do is hit me."

"That's it?" I nodded. "That's all I have to do, hit you once and we're done?"

"Yep."

His face split in a wide, cocky grin. "All right, you asked for it."

Two and a half hours later, he was splayed out across the bench, trying to catch his breath, while I stood in the middle of the mat, arms crossed again and completely unmarked. "Are you finished with your macho man bullshit yet?" I asked.

He waved a hand and glanced over at me. "I thought you said this was supposed to be a fair fight."

"It was. You're not allowed to use your power because I don't have one that compares. It was fists versus fists and you couldn't land a single one on me. Why?"

"You're too fast for me."

"That's not good enough. You should have been able to anticipate my possible moves and act on the actual one by pure instinct."

He sat up and wiped the sweat from his face. "Look, I ain't like you, I don't have the whole feral thing going for me."

"Which is why you're here." I waved him over and sat down in the middle of the mat. He eyed me warily for a moment (finally! A breakthrough!) before joining me. "Before we came back here, Wolverine and I taught mutant kids how to defend themselves. Most of them weren't like us, but we taught them how to compensate for that. Fortunately, most of them hadn't learned any bad habits, so we didn't have to make them unlearn anything. You have a lot to unlearn and I promise, it'll be painful."

"Ya know, we heard stories around about you guys, how you got away and all that shit. How come you came back?"

"That's none of your business," I said coldly. "The only thing you need to worry about is learning what I have to teach you in here."

"Hey, I was just wondering." There was something a little off about this guy, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I made a mental note to talk to Logan about it later, but Shatter was still talking and I forced my attention back to him. "So how long do you think it'll be until I can go out in the field?"

I stood up and smirked down at him. "At this rate? A very long time." I motioned for him to stand and resumed my defensive position. "You know the drill. Hit me."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Later that night, Logan and I compared notes on our "students". Shatter never did manage to land a single punch on me that first day, but Logan had a much more interesting story to tell. We were sitting outside watching the sun go down, enjoying the fact that our guards were becoming fewer and further between every day. Logan was leaning against the wall smoking a cigar, with me leaning on his shoulder with a smoke of my own.

"...An' I swear, the only unarmed move she's got is a kick to the balls. Don't matter if it's a gun, a machete or my fuckin' claws, her first instinct is to go for the balls as hard as she can."

"I hope she didn't hit you too hard, lover," I replied, stifling a giggle. "I'd really hate to have to kill her."

"Nah, she didn't get close. Tried pretty damn hard, but never landed a single kick." He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. "Now, put a weapon in her hands an' she might just be better'n you."

"The hell you say!"

"I'm dead serious, darlin'. Damn near gutted me clean open with a broken broom handle. She'll be great for undercover assassin work, if she ever outgrows her obsession with kickin' people in the balls."

"And IF she gets a chance to get that old," I reminded him. "We still don't know how long the artificial healing factor can battle the admanatium poisoning before the operatives become unusable."

He nodded, frowning slightly. "Yeah well, let's hope that Dr. Lee can figure it out."

I shifted position and stared at him curiously. "Logan, why do you care?"

"Hmm?"

"Why do you care what happens to these people?"

He let out a sigh along with a cloud of smoke. "These kids, they didn't ask for this, didn't want this. Who knows what they'd be doin' right now if they'd never been found by these guys? Hell, they coulda been some o' our students back at Xavier's, had Chuck found 'em first." He stubbed out his cigar and flicked the butt across the pavement. "We spent almost ten years tryin' to stop these guys an' save as many as we could. How many more did we miss? Was it dumb luck they never got a hold o' Kyle or Rahne? Or hell, even Piotr, Kitty, Jubilee? They all went to college, we graduated a bunch 'fore we came back here who went on to have their own lives." His claws slid out slowly and he turned his fist to look at them from every angle. "Ain't no reason for somethin' like this to happen to anyone else. Ain't no reason 'cept one guy who can't get past his own bullshit to get back at someone who's dead an' gone. They're just kids, Angela an' they deserve a chance to get their lives back."

I smiled and leaned back into his shoulder with a sigh. "That was a lovely speech, but I wasn't talking about the kids. I meant people like Vulture and Tigress."

"Oh. Well, I'm kinda hopin' Dr. Lee uses 'em for test subjects. Fuckin' psychos, the lot of 'em."

I laughed out loud, the sound almost too loud in the dying light. "They say the same thing about us, you know."

"But in their case it's true." He leaned over and kissed me. "Only thing that makes me crazy is you."

"Flatterer." I settled back into his shoulder and we watched the sun finally slide below the horizon. A few moments later, a guard approached discreetly to escort us back inside. We stood and followed him inside, but he was only there to secure the doors behind us. We went the rest of the way to our quarters on our own, other soldiers pointedly ignoring us whenever we encountered them. It seemed odd somehow, that they'd gone from full alert around us to fearful indifference so quickly. It made me wonder yet again exactly what they had in mind for us for the long run.

Pity they'd never get a chance to try it, whatever it was.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

About two weeks later, Logan and I switched students and I got to experience Sylph for myself. All I have to say about _that _is I am very glad I don't have balls for her to kick. Otherwise, she was everything that Logan said she was. From short knife to quarterstaff, the girl was good. It made me wonder if they were starting to dump some combat training into their heads along with the altered personalities and emotional crippling the telepaths specialized in.

Logan on the other hand was completely unimpressed with Shatter. I believe his exact words were "fuckin' waste o' perfectly good adamantium". A week later, we combined our efforts with them in an attempt to make them into a team. Before then, they'd spent precious little time together and they desperately needed to learn how to combine their talents to the best of their abilities. If I'm ever asked to do it again, I may just dig out my own eyeballs with a fork; it would be a lot less painful.

First off, they hated each other. They both believed they were better than the other and refused to take orders from each other. Secondly, they each believed the other had "useless" powers. Neither one could see the usefulness of the others' power. And last - but certainly not least! - they couldn't see any reason why they had to be a team when there were six other operatives around they could be paired with at any given time. Fork. Eyeballs. That's all I have to say.

So, out of the twelve weeks we had them for training, the first four were spent in individual instruction, but six of the next eight were spent trying to keep them from killing each other. We finally gave up all pretense of getting along with them and locked them into one of the training centers together. We told them they were going to stay in there until they learned how to work together or they killed each other, whichever came first. It took them two hours before they believed we meant it. It took another two hours for Sidowski to get wind of it and attempt to reverse our decision. But Buzz had taught me a thing or two about electronic locks, so the lock codes were well scrambled by the time she showed up demanding answers.

Logan had gone to the canteen to get us some coffee and wasn't back yet when the Colonel came striding down the hallway with a look of fury on her face. I bit back a curse and stood up as she approached, her ubiquitous bodyguards right behind her.

"Hellcat, what is the meaning of this?" She demanded as she pointed at the door.

"Lesson in cooperation, sir," I replied crisply.

"Cooperation? Have you even glanced at the monitors? They're killing each other in there!"

I took a second to take a glance at the monitors and had to stifle a laugh. Sylph had Shatter pushed up against the wall, probably with a continuous blast of air. Every weapon in the room had already been reduced to splinters, probably victims of Shatter's power, but the single bench was still intact along with the racks that formerly held the broken weapons and the cameras in the four corners. He looked exhausted and I had no doubts that he'd be begging to be let out of there in next to no time. "Yes sir, cooperation. Wolverine and I can teach them to fight and to kill, but we can't make them get along."

"Who gave you the authority to override the lock codes?"

"No one, sir. I did that myself so they couldn't get out. It apparently never occurred to Shatter to use his powers on the door to get out."

Sidowski closed her eyes and I could have sworn she was counting to ten. When she opened them again, she leveled a steely gaze on me. "Hellcat, open that door right now and get them the hell out of there."

"With all due respect, sir, no."

She took a step forward and looked down her nose at me. "Release them immediately, that's an order."

I sighed, but turned to the computer terminal and tapped in the new lock codes. The doors slid open and the Colonel strode in there with her guards before I could stop her. A heartbeat later, I heard shouts of pain and the Colonel shouting something over the sound of the agonized cries. I rushed in there and stopped dead at what I saw.

Shatter had apparently regained enough strength to use his power on one of the Colonel's guards and it was his shouting I heard, made obvious by the way his leg was bent at an unnatural angle behind him. The other guard lay on the floor a few feet away, bleeding from the ears, his eyes wide open but unseeing, obviously dead. The Colonel had her sidearm out, pointed at Shatter and shouting for him to stand down, but he was having none of it. Sylph was sitting with her back to the wall across the room, her eyes dazed but at least she was breathing. I had a decision to make and I didn't want to. I could do nothing and let Shatter do what he wanted to the Colonel, saving me the trouble of doing it later. Or I could intervene and save her now, which would give me the satisfaction of getting her myself later. I only hesitated for a moment, but it was long enough.

I had just taken a step forward to interpose myself between them when the Colonel's gun blew up in her hand. I hit the floor even as she started screaming and I heard a sickening crack as something else in her broke. I leapt to my feet and threw myself towards Shatter, hoping to knock him to the ground and get him subdued, when the tips of three gleaming adamantium claws exploded through the right side of his chest. His eyes went wide with disbelief even as Logan retracted the claws and let him fall to the floor. "Be glad I didn't stab ya on the other side, bub," he snarled as he loomed over Shatter's prone form. "That wound'll hurt like hell, but it ain't gonna kill ya."

I turned my back on the two of them and focused my attention on the Colonel. She was curled in a ball on the floor, her right hand cradled against her chest. I bent down to take stock of her condition when the sound of booted feet on concrete followed by the cocking of many weapons stopped me dead in my tracks. "Hellcat, hands up!" Someone shouted. "On your knees, now!"

I raised my hands over my head and turned as slowly as possible. "Guys, come on. I know how this looks, but it wasn't me!"

"On your knees or we'll shoot you where you stand!" The soldier barked. He was a bit older than most of the others stationed at Area 51, his iron gray hair buzzed short, but what caught my eye were the four scars that started on his right cheekbone and traced angry red furrows down his neck and disappeared into the collar of his shirt. "I _owe_ you, so just give me a reason."

I narrowed my eyes, but did what he said, lowering myself to my knees as carefully as possible. "Look, I didn't do this. Talk to Shatter about that." I glanced over to where Logan was still standing over the younger mutant, but now with the added bonus of two soldiers training their automatic rifles at him. "Uhhh, guys? Guns only piss him off, ya know."

The Colonel groaned softly and we all turned to her. "Stand down, Major. Hellcat didn't do this, much at is pains me to admit it."

The major started barking for a medic and one of the guys covering Logan took off at a run out of the training room. Sylph was finally starting to come around a bit; her eyes had lost the glazed look and she was shaking her head slowly as though to clear it. In the meantime, Shatter was curled up on the floor, waiting for the triple stab wound in his chest to close up. Colonel Sidowski had managed to sit up, her hand cradled close to her chest. "Hellcat, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but thank you."

"Don't thank me, sir, thank Wolverine. He's the one who stabbed him."

"That may be, but I saw the decision you had to make there. I'm no fool, I know you'll come for me someday. But today isn't the time and you'll want me for yourself. So, thank you."

"Just doing my job, sir." I gave her a curt nod and left the training room, dodging a couple medics as they rushed in. As soon as I was around the corner, I broke into a jog and didn't stop until I was outside and well away from the door. I stopped and leaned over to catch my breath, expecting the sounds of guards to catch up with me, but the only thing I could hear was the wind and the normal noises of day-to-day operations. I ran my fingers through my hair in an attempt to get my emotions under control as I stood, my heart racing, my mind not far behind. I closed my eyes and let the wind whip my hair around my face as I tried to bring myself back under control.

Why did I change my mind? I could have let Shatter kill her; from the dead guy lying on the floor, he was more than capable of doing so. But even as the thoughts ran through my head, I knew the answer. Twenty-five years earlier, they made me a killer, but a decade with Charles Xavier reminded me what it was like to be human and that even those who don't seem to deserve compassion are usually the ones who need it most. I didn't have to like it, but it was true.

The air was noticeably cooler when I finally heard footsteps approaching from behind me. I didn't have to look to know it was Logan. "Hey darlin', ya all right?" He asked quietly and I just nodded in response. "You did the right thing back there, ya know."

"Maybe, maybe not." I turned to him and slid my arms around his waist. "What's the difference anyway? Just prolonging the inevitable, after all."

"I dunno 'bout that," he replied, returning the embrace. "Stuff like that, it makes an impression on people. Ya hesitated, sure, but ya decided to act an' try to help her. Now, when the time comes, maybe she'll hesitate an' that'll be all it takes for her to spare you."

I kept silent, my thoughts still too scattered to form a reply. I just stood there in my lover's arms and wondered yet again what our future would hold once all was said and done here. And if the world would ever forgive us for the things we planned to do.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A few days after we finished with Shatter and Sylph, Logan and I chose another mission, going through each file with intense scrutiny. We finally settled on a "sweep and clear" in the Middle East, a military base rumored to have its own mutant super soldier program. Since the Director wanted absolutely no competition in that arena, he wanted it and the test subjects either subdued and brought back or taken out. The main reason we selected that one in particular was simple: the base was fucking huge and more than two people could take out on their own. After the morning briefing, we met with the colonel to request that Demon and Vulture accompany us as backup support.

"I thought you were the unbeatable team," she said with smirk. "Why should I risk four when you two should be sufficient?"

"Colonel, we wouldn't normally choose a mission like this simply because the base is so large," I replied. "But this file is flagged as top priority and if it's that important, we should take it."

"Sending a secondary team as backup is highly irregular and we don't have enough of you fini…available to risk losing a trained pair." She shook her head and closed the file. "No, I can't authorize that."

"You'll be riskin' the best pair ya got if ya don't," Logan said. "An' we ain't gonna go in all at once. Me an' Hellcat'll go in first from the south, mix things up, start a panic while those two take care o' their choppers an' ground transports. Soon as they're done, they go in here," he pointed to a spot near the northern edge of the base, "an' we meet 'em in the middle o' the underground complex here." He stabbed his finger at another part of the map. "With the four o' us in there, we can have that place leveled in half the time."

Sidowski frowned at the map, probably trying to find a flaw in our logic, but it wasn't forthcoming. Finally, she sighed and looked up. "All right. I don't know how you always manage to do it, but you've convinced me. You'll leave tomorrow morning, oh-eight-hundred. Come back here at eighteen hundred tonight for a final briefing with the two of them. Dismissed."

We left the office and wandered back to our room, inwardly celebrating at our good fortune. Finally, we'd have a chance to prove to her just how useless her other operatives could be.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The main difference between a "sweep and clear" and other ops that appear similar on the surface is timing. If this place happened to be located in the middle of a jungle, we may have asked to be dropped in several miles away and hiked to the location, just to get a feel for the land and find alternate escape routes to extraction points or even hiding places on the off chance we needed them. But this was in the middle of a desert, where cover is scarce to say the least, so there's really no point in going in early.

We left Area 51 at oh-eight-hundred, but that didn't mean we hit the base right away. Our transport team took us to a secured location about ninety miles away from our target, which allowed me to recover from the massive dose of whatever Dr. Lee gave me to keep me out for the long flight and gave us the opportunity to make our final plans once we were there. So when I finally woke up, it was to the sound of snickering and whispered taunts from our temporary teammates. I'm sure they thought I couldn't hear them, but oh were they wrong.

"Some badass she is, huh Demon?" Vulture whispered.

"Oh yeah," came the sarcastic reply. "She's a real nightmare, curled up in Wolverine's lap like that."

"Uh, guys?" Logan said and I could hear the smirk in his voice. "She's wakin' up an' we can hear ya."

"What?" Demon's voice held a note of panic and I stifled a giggle.

Logan scoffed and started patting his pockets, probably looking for his lighter. "Don't the two o' ya ever read anythin'?" I heard him snap his lighter and smiled to myself as the comforting scent of his cigar wafted over me. "We can both hear ya no matter how much ya mumble over there. Got super hearing, after all. An' if ya bothered to read up on us, you'd know that."

"We know all we need to know about you guys," Vulture said and I could hear the sneer as he said it. "You're a couple killing machines that claim to be the best."

"I don't 'claim' anythin', bub." He took a long drag off his cigar and chuckled. "The truth's in our files if ya bothered to look."

I finally decided to give him a hand and rolled over to face them. "They giving you a hard time, Wolverine?"

"Nah, nothin' I can't handle, darlin'."

I sat up and stretched, giving my head a shake to clear the last of the fog from my brain, then looked over at the other pair. "So, you got anything you want to say to me?" I asked with feigned sweetness.

Demon shook his head but Vulture wasn't nearly as smart. "Yeah, I do." He leaned forward with a smirk on his face. "Like I said to Demon here. If you're such a badass, how come you're afraid to fly?"

"_Everything_ has a weakness, Vulture. The trick is figuring out how to exploit it."

"So if I grabbed you right now and took you up five hundred feet, you'd what? Freak out on me?"

"Yeah, _if_ you could get out of here before Wolverine killed you. And _if_ you managed that, I'd just kill you in the air."

He snorted. "But you'd fall and die too, so what would that accomplish?"

"I'll come back again tomorrow. Would you?"

He scowled and looked away, knowing when he was beat. I just smiled and stood up. "Ok, let's get this show on the road."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We waited until well after dark, when the majority of the base personnel would be either asleep or, at the very least, too tired to put up much resistance. It isn't that Logan and I thought we couldn't handle it, but the base really was much larger than anything we'd ever hit and we didn't want to waste all night killing them one by one when a few well-placed bombs could do most of the work for us. Not to mention, neither one of us had any illusions about the effectiveness of our temporary teammates. Sure, they could probably kill people as well as we could - killing is easy - but we doubted their ability to do it efficiently. So we figured if we minimized resistance, they could maximize their contribution.

The transport team dropped Logan and me off just a few klicks south of the base before turning to the north to drop Vulture and Demon. We wasted no time making our way through the cool desert night, more or less hitting the ground running, so to speak. We ran into a few sentries on the way and we dispatched them quickly and quietly, knowing that we might only have minutes before the base was alerted to trouble when those guys didn't check in. We traveled as fast as we could in the shifting sand and were relieved when the base was still quiet when we reached the surrounding fence.

I cocked my head and smiled when I saw that Logan was doing the same. "You hear that?" I asked, frowning.

He nodded. "Yeah. Electrified." He popped his claws and gritted his teeth. "This is gonna hurt."

"I got your back." He gave me a half smile, then took a deep breath and slashed the fence open, his body shuddering as the electricity arced through his bones. He stumbled back a few steps, retracting his claws, and I placed a steadying hand on his back. "You okay?"

He leaned forward with his hands on his knees. "Yeah, just gimme a second." He shook his head and took a couple more deep breaths, then straightened up. "C'mon, let's go."

We eased ourselves carefully through the gap he'd made, taking extreme caution not to touch the fence itself. Once inside, I removed the earpieces from one of my pants pockets and handed one to Logan even as I fitted mine in my own ear. "X One to X Two, status." Logan whispered.

"X Two, status green," Demon replied. "Over the fence now."

"Copy that. Proceed with demo. Call if ya need help."

I heard Vulture scoff. "Not bloody likely. X Two out."

I looked at Logan and rolled my eyes. "Can I kill him?" I asked, a pained expression on my face.

He chuckled and patted my shoulder. "Only if ya can make it look like an accident."

"Where's the fun in that?" He chuckled again, then sobered up and jerked his head towards the nearest building. I sighed and fell in beside him, and we stalked through the shadows to the door.

We paused at the threshold and I pressed my free ear to the door, listening for any movement. After a moment, I nodded and stepped back, giving Logan room to maneuver. He slid out a single claw and jammed it into the card reader, which spewed sparks and the lights on the readout went dark. I tried the knob and it turned easily. I eased the door open and Logan took a tentative sniff, then nodded once to signal that it was all clear. I slipped inside the building with him right behind me.

We found ourselves in what appeared to be a bland office of some sort, bearing a strong resemblance to the front desk area of anything from the post office to a police station. A desk about four feet high stood a few feet beyond the door, with straight-backed wooden chairs lined up along the wall next to it. According to the base schematics we'd looked at, there should be an entrance to the underground testing facilities in one of the back offices. It was one of those military quirks that Logan and I had never been able to figure out. Whenever a base had anything they wanted to keep secret, there was a ninety percent chance it would be underground and about the same chances that the entrance would be in an office somewhere on the base. It was like the same team of designers came up with the plans, making a few alterations to the surface layout while giving a few basic choices for the underground portions. I had a sudden vision of military bigwigs looking at floor plans for military bases and choosing the one they liked in the same way someone else might select an apartment, and I had to stifle a giggle at the visual.

We paused at the door and we both scanned the room for some variety of alarm system, but we saw nothing. Of course, the possibility that we'd already set something off when Logan killed the card reader was there, but we didn't worry about that. No one had come running and no one was waiting for us, so we proceeded into the room and vaulted easily over the desk. An open doorway led into the back offices and Logan preceded me through it, his head moving from side to side, using his enhanced senses to analyze our surroundings. I used the two super senses I have to do the same to a lesser degree, but that's why Logan went first. His nose would likely alert us to any danger long before I could hear or see anything. But he whispered that he couldn't smell anyone besides us, all the other scents at least a few hours old and of no concern to us. Satisfied, we continued down the hall to the office where the entrance was hidden.

We paused again when we came up to the door in question, making sure no one was inside and that we couldn't hear any type of alarm or other surveillance. Once we were both sure, Logan opened the door carefully and peered inside. The room was blanketed in shadows, but a tiny blinking red light, barely visible behind a file cabinet, betrayed the location of the door we were looking for. We crossed over to the cabinet and Logan fumbled around until he found the catches, snapping them open and the cabinet slid to the side about three feet before coming to a rest. He eased one of his claws out and again jammed it into the card reader, and a section of the paneled wall slid aside, revealing an elevator shaft. We both peered down into the darkness, but we couldn't tell how far it was to the bottom.

I let out a sigh and ran my fingers through my hair. "Any bright ideas?"

He shrugged. "I could jump," he whispered, trying to gauge the distance by listening.

That gave me an idea. "Hold on a sec," I said and crossed to the desk. A cup in the corner held an assortment of pens and pencils, so I grabbed one and went back to the opening. He grinned and I dropped it. It didn't take long for it to hit bottom and I smiled with him. "Ok, jumping it is."

He winked at me and stepped into the black and I heard him land with a muffled grunt. I took a deep breath and followed him, landing with a bone-jarring impact. Hands reached out to steady me and we stood still for a moment while the cartilage in my knees recovered slowly. As soon as the throb subsided to dull ache, I moved away. I sensed more than I saw Logan kneel down and I heard the screech of metal on metal as he cut a hole in the top of the elevator car. Light poured in from below, momentarily blinding me and I bit back a curse that I forgot to close my eyes. I wiped them with the back of my hand and opened them a few seconds later, just in time to see Logan slip through the opening.

We paused there for a moment so Logan could check in with the others. "X One to X Two, sitrep?"

"Still green up here, X One," Demon replied. "Only got a few more to go."

"Any resistance?"

"Nothing that resisted for long." I smirked to myself and wondered if that was true or if they were just saying that so they didn't look like assholes. Then again, they _were_ assholes, so I was banking on the latter. "Meet you down below in twenty."

"Roger that, X One out." Logan tapped his com and snorted. "Meet us here in twenty. We could clear the place out in twenty."

"Ya wanna?" I asked, a huge grin on my face.

He smirked, then grabbed me and kissed me hard. "God, I love you so much."

"Yeah, you ain't so bad yourself."

He kissed me again, then turned to the elevator doors and popped his claws. He ripped the doors open and stalked into the brightly lit hallway, his hands held out to his sides. "Last one back here's a pussy," he said with a chuckle.

"Hey, that's not fair!" I replied as I kicked my boots back into the elevator car. I kicked my boots back into the elevator and slid out my claws, taking a position next to him. "I'm coming with you."

"Might take longer that way."

"Oh what, twenty-five minutes instead of twenty? Do you _really_ think they're gonna make it here in twenty?"

"Ya got me there." He narrowed his eyes and inhaled deeply, then popped his claws. "Game on," he said with a feral grin.

I grinned back as we eased ourselves to the corner of the hallway, taking position to wait for the first of our targets.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Fifteen minutes later, we'd punched, kicked, clawed, slashed and otherwise fought our way through more than two-thirds of the underground complex. Oddly enough, it wasn't nearly as big as the base above, which led us to believe that this was the only underground section that was actually being used. Our schematics had shown a much vaster array of labs, cells and offices, but during our battle we'd encountered several doors that were welded shut, hallways that led literally to nowhere and lots of space that wasn't being used for anything other than storage. It was a puzzling development, but one we didn't have time to explore completely.

We finally made it to the holding area, where the test subjects were supposedly being held, only to find dozens of empty cells, some of them with no sign of ever being occupied. Others had been empty for some time, Logan saying the scents were very faint and difficult for even him to pick up. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as a chill ran down my spine. Where were the mutants?

I wiped a trickle of blood off my forehead from a nasty cut I'd taken over my left eye and looked around. "This is weird," I said as I leaned against the wall, then hissed when I bumped a gunshot wound in my arm. I slid out a claw and started digging around for the bullet.

"Yeah, I gotta agree with ya there," Logan replied, still trying to catch a scent. "Ain't been anyone 'round here for a coupla weeks at least."

I found the offending slug and tossed it on the ground. "Well, we've come this far, might as will finish up and figure it out later." He nodded and we continued on our way.

We got our answer a few minutes later, when we found the main testing area. Unsurprisingly, the windowless doors were sealed shut and we could hear the sound of both a generator and an air circulator somewhere nearby. We didn't see a card reader or other external locking mechanism, so it was safe to assume that even under optimal conditions, people had to be let in from the inside all the time. Obviously, this is where people evacuated to when getting out wasn't an option and as long as they had food and water in there, the people could stay in there for as long as it held out. But the doors weren't adamantium – they weren't even adamantium coated – so Logan stabbed his claws into the door on the left and ripped them downward. He pulled them out and smiled when light came in from the other side. "Well, at least we know they ain't thicker than nine inches," he said as he plunged his claws back in.

I bit my lip. "Oh, there are _so many_ things I could say right now!"

He scowled at me as he worked on the door, cutting his own door and kicking down the section he'd cut around. It fell with a reverberating thud and as soon as it came to rest, he was hit with a hail of bullets. An angry growl rumbled up from deep in his chest and he dove into the room, ignoring the gunshots that continued to pepper his chest. I went in right after him and lashed out at the first person I encountered, who said something to me in rapid Arabic before leveling his automatic rifle at me. My claws caught him across the back of his hand and he lost his grip on the gun. I kicked him in the gut and he stumbled back a few paces. I leapt forward and clawed him across the face before kicking him the groin. He went down, clutching himself, and I kicked him in the face, knocking him out.

"Behind you!" Logan shouted and I ducked as I spun around, sweeping the legs of the soldier trying to outflank me. He landed hard on his back and I pounced forward, ripping his throat out with my good hand. But I didn't see the guy coming up from my left until it was too late and he kicked me in the face, breaking my nose. I snarled and leapt on him, clawing at his eyes. He reeled back with a shriek as one of them came neatly out of the socket and I flicked it away. I grabbed either side of his head and give a vicious twist and he went down, breathing his last.

Another soldier rushed towards me and I kicked him in the knee, breaking it with a sickening crack. As I moved to finish him off, he pulled a sidearm and shot me in the head, knocking me off my feet, and I landed hard on my back. He said something in Arabic with a derisive tone and took a step forward, but six metal claws exploded from his chest and he shuddered for a moment, a huge gout of blood erupting from his mouth before Logan tossed him aside like so much baggage. He went to one knee next to me, concern coloring his expression. "Are you okay?"

I nodded and immediately regretted the decision, since my head was still ringing something fierce. "I will be," I replied, holding my forehead. "I hate getting shot in the head."

"It's the only time I _don't_ mind the adamantium skeleton," he agreed, then held out his hand. I grabbed it and he helped me to my feet. "Ya know he called ya a filthy mutant whore 'fore I killed 'im."

"He what?" I stalked over to the corpse and kicked it in the ribs, which wasn't nearly as satisfying as killing him would have been. But since he was almost cut in half, it would have to do. I looked around the room, which appeared to be a huge lab of some sort, and saw that we were the only living things left. "You couldn't leave me a couple more?"

He shrugged. "They shot me. I was pissed." I shook my head, not bothering to hide my amused grin. "But I think I solved the missin' mutant case."

"Oh yeah?" He nodded and led me to the other side of the room, where a series of what appeared to be cold storage lockers lined one wall. "What the hell are these?"

"One o' the guys I killed was sayin' somethin' 'bout not lettin' us get near these," he said, reaching for the handle. I dashed blood out of my eyes from my still-healing gunshot and readied myself for anything. He opened the door and a rush of cold air swept over us, a cloud of condensation so frigid I swear I could feel it in my bones. Nothing else happened, so he ventured inside carefully with me right behind him.

"Son of a bitch," he spat, looking around and I agreed with that assessment. Cold storage locker was right on the money. All around us, hanging like sides of beef in a slaughterhouse, were the bodies of at least dozen naked people, ranging from children no older than about twelve to one woman who appeared to be in her mid- to late fifties. Further inspection revealed that they all had something tattooed on their right shoulder blade and Logan cursed again. "It just says 'mutant' with a number. No names, no codes, nothin' to let us know who these people were."

"My gods! What happened to them?"

"I dunno. But I'll bet they got files 'round here somewhere that'll tell us."

He went back into the lab proper while I continued on to the rest of lockers. The story was the same, a dozen or so dead mutants in each one, all numbered and filed away here. I walked out of the last one and went to one of the dead soldiers on the ground, kicking him over and over again until I heard something crack. I stood there, breathing hard, trying to get control of my anger, when Logan called me over to where he sat in front of a computer.

"What you got lover?" I asked, leaning over his shoulder.

"Still didn't find any names," he said, his own anger still evident in his clipped tone, "but I found this." He translated everything for me, since I don't read Arabic, and what he said made that chill trail down my spine again. Apparently, they had indeed been trying to create their own mutant super soldiers, but they'd had absolutely no success. None of the mutants they brought in ever survived whatever procedures they were trying on them, a combination of drugs, implants and even experimental cybernetics. By the end of his recitation, I was supremely glad that we were leveling this place. Apparently, it was the only base involved with their program and destroying it would also destroy the only facility equipped for it. If nothing else, we'd set them back several years, giving us time to complete our own personal mission and get back to Xavier's with the news.

We left the lab and started walking back to the elevator when we ran into Demon and Vulture. "You're late," Logan snapped, checking his watch.

"We ran into a squad in one of the hangars," Demon replied, folding his arms defensively. "Took a while to get them taken care of."

"Ya coulda locked 'em in there an' just let 'em go up with the rest o' the base."

"We felt it was more important to remove them as a possible threat."

"Yeah, an' instead, ya probably gave 'em plenty o' time to rouse the rest o' the troops."

"We didn't see anyone when we started down here," Vulture said sullenly. "Looks like you didn't wait for us anyway."

Logan shrugged. "Didn't need to." He stood up and glared up at the taller mutant. "Next time, ya just let it go an' finish your job. I ain't gonna cut ya any slack."

"Who says there's gonna be a 'next time' anyway?"

"If I get my way, there won't be. But we both know what the Director's got planned for us an' if ya violate mission protocol on the field like this again, I'll kill ya myself." He shouldered past Vulture and stalked towards the door. "C'mon, we still got charges to set an' who knows how many pissed off soldiers to fight our way through."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

As it turned out, not as many as we'd feared, but still more than we'd hoped. It took us almost half an hour to get them at least subdued, then we signaled for pickup. The chopper arrived in under two minutes and we hit the detonator as soon as we reached a safe distance. We flew to the secured airstrip, where I received my massive dose of Pheno B and by the time I woke up, we were back in Nevada. Sidowski insisted on debriefing us right away and as soon as we were done, she sent Demon and Vulture on their way, but asked us to stay.

She just sat there for a moment, looking us over with narrowed eyes. We waited patiently for her to get to whatever it was she wanted from us. Just before the whole thing became uncomfortable, she sighed and rubbed her eyes. "You do know that this is the hardest thing I've ever had to say to anyone, right?" She said.

"Sir?" I asked, confused.

She sighed and sat back in her hair. "You were right, both of you. This isn't the first time they've broken mission protocol, but because they completed their missions more often than not, we never did anything about it. But there's no reason why they shouldn't have been able to finish on the surface and do half the work underground. But not only did you two prove that they're in desperate need of discipline, they also need a lot more training than they've been given."

"An' I s'pose we're the ones who'll be doin' that, sir?" Logan asked.

"They don't need any help with combat, but tactics?" She nodded. "As soon as they get out of sensory dep, they're all yours." She turned her attention back to the files scattered on her desk in a clear dismissal. We made our way back to our room, both satisfied that we'd proven an important point, yet troubled at the same time. Now we would get to figure out if we could train them in tactics without training them too well. After all, there's no sense in giving the enemy any advantage.

* * *

**AN:** Special thanks to **Andromeda Jones **for being my newest reviewer! (On this series, at least)...i'm sorry about the not-so-prompt update, but at least i got it out as soon as i could...also, Special thanks to my beta team of Zac, Turiel Tincdaniel and DBK(tm)...you guys rock! DBK(tm) has been very quiet lately, so he's not getting any other thanks from me til he starts begging again...:) But i still have Super Special thanks to my readers for sticking with me through over 700(!) pages of reading...:) You guys have stamina! And Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were theNightEnchantress, TnTornado, Andromeda Jones and CaptMacKenzie...:) Mr. Tornado: It'll play out...that's all i'm gonna say...:) Andromeda Jones (Mr.? Miss? Mrs.?): Maybe not too soon...there's still a lot of story to go! Cap'n: I sent you a PM regarding helping me write a better Remy...as for the ominous plot twists...you have NO idea...:)

**Now, i swear, if i get one new reviewer, i'll post an update as soon as i get it...i've already checked and re-checked every chapter and everything is in order...:) So just click "go", say hello or something and i'll post right away...really, i just wanna know who's out there!**


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

(Scott)

We received the news that Storm was expecting with mixed feelings. We were all obviously elated, but it was tempered with a touch of sadness because she couldn't be with us. Naturally, this news started a round of speculations on Hank's part, since the happy parents were both mutants and he was eager to follow her pregnancy and the development of the child once it was born. If there's one lesson we all learned from Logan, Angela and Evie, it's that mutations are not necessarily going to follow the normal course of genetic inheritance. But it still made us wonder what it would be like to have a student running around here with super strength that could control the weather.

Speaking of students, the first batch of new ones started showing up about a week ago, including six of the non-mutant kids. The youngest of them is fourteen and she said she wanted to come to Xavier's because she wants to be the first woman president elected on a pro-mutant platform. She said it with such gravity that it's very easy to believe that she'll make it happen. The oldest one we're expecting is seventeen, but he'll be arriving just after the term starts. Seems he's off in Africa somewhere doing some kind of research camp with elephants, the equivalent of summer camp for the super-rich. I don't get it myself, since I was an orphan before Charles found me and brought me here. Only Jean and Hank still had parents when I arrived, but it does please me to no end that all of that has changed for so many of our kids.

But the kids we were waiting for with eager anticipation were Jacob and Lauren Gibson, the children we had rescued from the Colorado avalanche the previous winter along with their parents. In fact, they had been the first to apply to the school, the first non-mutant children we'd accepted when the applications came pouring in from all over the country. It was a new experience for all of us at Xavier's, since most of our students had previously been runaways or orphans with a very few who had been sent by their parents, believing this to be nothing more than a prep school. But since the DC Metro incident, we'd been more and more in the public eye until finally, the idea of anonymity was a thing of the past. We still had a few members on the team who wanted to remain as anonymous as possible, but it was much less of a concern than it had been in the past. The Mutant Registration Act finally found itself relegated to a few sentences in a history text where it belonged, while Congress once again debated adding mutants to the Civil Rights Act. However, unlike other times that the issue had come up, both Hank and Charles had been asked to testify before a subcommittee, to present their own findings that mutant births were still steadily rising. And in the midst of all this, the kids arrived in a steady stream.

Of course, the biggest concern on my mind is Angela and Logan. They had said they were going to do what they could to keep Weapon X from making another try for the school and I don't doubt that they kept their word. But anyone who does what Weapon X does to mutants can't really be expected to keep their word, so it's something that weighs heavily on my mind. The previous worst-case scenario is now the best one I can think of, because at least Logan and Angela are known quantities and they did their best to teach all of us how to defeat them. But if they decided to come back and they sent someone else, someone new, anything was possible. I can only pray that it won't happen and do the best I can to protect the kids if it does.

Still, I'll sleep much better at night once they're back here where they belong. And if anyone tells Logan that I said he belongs here, I'll kill them myself.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Sam)

I'm going to be a father. Well technically, I already AM a father, since Ororo is pregnant and there's no doubt that it's mine. Finally, some genuine good news in the midst of all this tragedy.

Fortuntely, there's a spare room here that'll work just fine as a nursery for the baby. Evie has taken it upon herself to oversee the decorating of the baby's room, since - as she put it - she was a baby much more recently than any of us. I think she's just trying to do something to keep herself busy so she doesn't spend all of her free time worrying about her parents. There's only so much time she can spend doing schoolwork or sculpting, so decorating the baby's room is one more thing she can do to occupy her time.

We did what we could for her for her birthday, but there was a pall over the occasion since it should have been spent with the people who love her best. But until we know what's going on with them, we don't feel that it's safe to go back to the school. We probably won't go back until Angela and Logan are already there, whenever that may be. I hope it won't be years, because every day that goes by is one more day too many. I understand why they did what they did, God only knows. I simply can't imagine what I would do if I was faced with the same choice. I don't know if I could kiss my child goodbye and leave her behind. Then again, I don't have psychotic black ops people looking for my child, so I won't have to make that choice. At least, I _hope _I never have to make that choice.

At least the government seems to be on our side for a change. Congress seems to be poised to add mutation to the Civil Liberties Act along with race, religion, sexual orientation and age. After all this time, people have finally figured out that we aren't all a bunch of megalomaniacs like Magneto. As with any other group of people, we have extremists on both ends of the spectrum, but most of us fall somewhere in between. Perhaps there will come a day when every public school will boast its own team of teachers who specialize in teaching young mutants about their gifts. Perhaps those same teachers will come from Xavier's. I only hope that it happens before my own child reaches school age. Not that I don't want him or her to attend Xavier's, far from it. But mutant children are born every day and it would be nice to know that all of them will have the opportunity to learn amongst those they grew up with prior to the onset of their mutation. I know that my life would have been more comfortable had that happened.

And did I mention that I'm going to be a father? I can hardly wait!

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

_Dear Diary,_

_Fifteen weeks, six days, three hours and forty-one minutes since mom and dad sent me away._

_I turned ten and everyone had a little party for me, but I told them it wasn't the real party, just a practice one until mom and dad can be here with me for it. I'm starting to get this feeling that they're not gonna be gone as long as I thought before. It's not anything that I saw or dreamed, just a feeling that we'll be together again before the end of next summer. I haven't said anything to anyone, just in case I'm wrong, but I don't think I am. Aunt Marie and Uncle Atlas would probably just tell me it was wishful thinking. Uncle Remy would probably understand, but I'm still gonna keep it to myself for at least a little longer. At least until I get good enough with my powers to try and see if I'm right._

_I'm in charge of decorating the baby's room for Aunt 'Roro. I'm not gonna peek and see if I can see if it's a boy or a girl, so I'm gonna decorate the whole thing in crayon colors. My room was crayon colors until I was like five, then it was decorated like Cinderella, with pictures painted on the walls and Uncle Atlas even made me a pair of glass slippers. I forgot to bring those with me, but I'm sure that they're ok. I'll bet Wendy's taking care of them for me, since they were my most favorite part of my whole room, next to the part where it was right next to mom and dad._

_Diary, I miss them so much! I had another bad dream about them, but I did the stuff that Uncle Charles told me to try and I woke up before it got too scary. They were somewhere with big trees and mountains and that girl with the red hair was with them along with another little girl. The second little girl is REALLY little, younger than me even, but she looks so much like dad. I thought for a little bit that she was another daughter, my sister, but the girl with the red hair isn't that much older than she was in the old dream when the bad men came to try and kidnap me, so I don't think she is my sister. At least, she's not mom's daughter, but how would dad ever have another daughter without mom? I mean, I know how babies are made and all that stuff, but I don't think dad would ever make a baby with anyone else. For one thing, mom would kill him. For another thing, he loves mom so much it's kinda embarassing, with all the kissing and stuff they do in front of everyone. But she really does look an awful lot like dad._

_Oh well, I'm sure I'll see more when there's more to see. And as soon as I know, so will everyone else. I have to go for now, Aunt Marie's taking me to get paint for the baby's room. I'm thinking yellow._

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Logan)

After three months of threats, beatings, everything except begging, we finally got Shatter and Sylph to work as a team. I don't know that they'll ever be _friends, _but at least they figured out that working together was going to be a lot easier than dealing with me and Angela for any longer than they had to. That's the good news. The bad news was that with the completion of their initial training, it put us back on the list to send out in the field.

We were tired of taking things in the urban jungle, so we waded through what seemed like thousands of files until we found one that would take us into a jungle of the natural variety. In fact, we went out of our way to find one that would require them to drop us off several days away from the intended target, with the extraction point no easier to get to. It wasn't easy, but we found one that suited our wants perfectly.

So, it was a week after Shatter and Sylph were sent on for the rest of their training that we were dropped at the edge of the rainforest somewhere in Central America. We still had to have a cover, so we were both armed with fancy cameras and tons of film, posing as photographers for a nature magazine. However, one of the bags that I was carrying wasn't filled with provisions or camping gear, but plastic explosives, some new variety that was a lot more stable than older versions. It would take us four days to hike to our target, but once there we got to blow it up. It's a man thing, I know, but blowing shit up is just plain fun.

So, for the second time in six months, Angela and I tandem jumped from an airplane in the middle of nowhere, since there was a snowball's chance in hell of her jumping out on her own. Our gear - such as it was - would be dropped just behind us, which meant we had to be well out of the way to make sure it didn't drop ON us. But we hit the ground and I rolled us out of the way, leaving plenty of clearance for the bundle containing our tent, backpacks and some basic provisions. Everything else, we'd have to find on our own. The best part about this kind of op was the complete lack of outside contact. It was up to us to make it to the extraction point at the right time, otherwise we'd be left behind until we could make it to the secondary point three days later. If we missed _that,_ we'd have to make our way to civilization, then call a specific phone number to request extraction. Tempting as it was, we had too much left to do to just disappear like that so soon.

It always takes my wife a few minutes to pull herself together after a jump, so I left her to it while I took care of splitting up our gear. She's stronger than she looks, thanks to lugging around about a hundred pounds of metal on her bones, but I'm still a lot stronger than she is so it would fall to me to take the heaviest part of the load. She'd get her own backpack and the tent; I would carry everything else. By the time I got that done, Angela had recovered enough to take up her own packs and we were on our way.

We didn't carry a map, we'd simply memorized the route we intended to take to our target, which was the main base of operations for one of _three_ warring guerilla factions. Why was it so all-fired important to destroy this place? They'd apparently gotten their hands on some experimental weaponry that had come out of a division of Weapon X and that was unacceptable to everyone in the command structure. The file didn't go into detail about what these weapons were, but there was always a chance that they were other mutants. So yeah, we'd blow the place up, but not before we got a look around to see if the weapons were living or just the regular kind.

The area we'd chosen as our drop site and main path to the base was unoccupied by any of the warring factions, with the bulk of the fighting to our south a bit. Of course, the possibility that there could be small scouting parties in that area was there, but small scouting parties were the least of our worries. Just like any other rainforest, it rains just about every day, but it still had its own "rainy season" where it would rain non-stop for days on end for a few weeks before tapering off and we were catching the tail end of the rainy season for the area. So, although it wasn't raining when we dropped in, we knew it would start up sooner or later and probably not stop for at least a few days. We hoped to be able to reach our target before that happened and be on the way out by the time it started to let the weather help to cover our escape.

Angela made sure to snap plenty of pictures that first day, so that if someone were to take it into their heads to follow us, we would appear to be nothing more than what we said we were. We had all the proper identification, including false identities in the names of Jeremy and Kathryn Bartlett. A dummy phone number for the magazine had been set up, so if a call were to be placed asking about us, it could be intercepted and answered by someone back at base and they would lie their asses off to confirm our employment with the magazine. But we managed to travel the first two days without incident, hiking for as long as the daylight held before setting up camp, washing up if there was a water source nearby and making love until we both fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion.

On the third day, we came across our first signs of the guerillas. In a warm, damp environment like this one, a body can decompose much faster than in a drier climate (where they more or less mummify), so it was hard to tell by sight or scent exactly how long they'd been there, but by our estimate it was at least a couple of months. If either one of us had any knowledge of insect activity beyond what we'd seen on television, we probably could have come up with a more accurate idea, but what we had was good enough. From what we could tell, there were five bodies, the remains pretty well scattered, but they hadn't been blown up. An explosion would have affected the local foliage and the ground as well, but there weren't any signs of new growth. Scavengers had probably caused some of the scattering, but it was obvious that most of the work had been done prior to their deaths. So, our fear was confirmed and the "experimental weapons" were probably mutants.

When we finished our survey of the area, we stopped for a bit of a conference. "Logan, this changes everything," Angela said, biting her lip.

"Yeah, it sure does," I replied. "We're gonna have to get in there an' spring whoever did this before we blow the place."

"Agreed, but we can't let them fall back into Weapon X hands." She shook her head as she bent to inspect the decaying remains of a leg. "Do you think there's any way to get them to Xavier's?"

"I don't see how, darlin', not without raisin' suspiscion."

"You don't suggest we kill them ourselves, do you?"

"What? No! Just gimme a minute to think, all right?" She backed off and left me to it. On the one hand, killing them would be a mercy, especially if they'd been nabbed in the pre-bonding stage. On the other, they could be very young and only doing what they did because of fear for their own lives. If they _were_ children, it would pose a bigger problem for us because there was no way either one of us would be able to just kill them, but we also couldn't leave them to find their way to a phone, armed only with their natural defenses and a scrap of paper with Xavier's phone number scribbled on it. I couldn't see any other choice in the matter, really. "Tiger, I think we'll have to take 'em with us, whoever they are, an' make like we couldn't get to either extraction point in time."

"So, it's a 'Plan C' scenario then?" She stood up and brushed herself off. "What if they scan us?"

"Then they'll know we lied an' stick us in sensory dep or somethin'. But I don't think they will. We got their trust back, as much as they trust any o' us."

She nodded and shouldered her pack. "Okay then, let's get this show on the road."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Over the next twenty-four hours, we came across more bodies even more badly decomposed than the first batch we found. If I didn't know better, I would've said it was the work of Sabretooth. But that asshole still hadn't been spotted since Liberty Island and from what I could remember of him from the first Weapon X days, he wasn't known for being either low-key or subtle in any way. There's no way he'd have stayed off the grid for this long, so I was pretty confident that he'd actually managed to die that night all those years ago.

We made our camp about three and a half miles north of our target in a clearing that boasted a stream as well as plenty of edible plants, getting the tent set up just before the nightly rainstorm. Our plan was to wait until the rain stopped for the night or midnight, whichever came first, before striking out for the base. The intel we had on the place showed that it wasn't very big; just a collection of small huts with a larger structure in the center where they housed what passed for command staff and the "experimental weapons". We were prepared for the worst; that the mutants they had there would be fucking psychos like Sabretooth and the best thing for everyone would be to take them out, no matter how young they were. Naturally, we were hoping that it would be much simpler, that they were under some form of control. In a case like this, telepathic would be better, simply because Xavier would be able to reverse it given enough time. If it was physical, like the chip that had been in my head at one time, it would be a bit more difficult – not to mention painful – to get rid of that. Best case, it would be simple coercion, like they'd done to Angela with Emma so long ago. And if that _did_ happen to be the case, we'd have to take extra care not to kill the people they were using against the subjects. It would take longer, but it would be worth it.

With several hours to kill before midnight, Angela and I decided to pass the time in our favorite way. As soon as the tent was put up and our gear stashed in the corner, Angela pounced on me and all other thoughts were pushed from our minds for the duration. We dozed off afterwards, her head pillowed on my shoulder and didn't wake again until the alarm on my watch started beeping. We both woke immediately.

"Damn it, I was having the best dream too," Angela complained as she looked for her clothes. "We were on a beach, watching the sunset, and Evie was still alive and splashing in the waves." I watched as she pulled on her clothing, taking my time getting dressed. "It was weird though, 'cause it felt so real. I mean, I could _smell_ her, you know?"

"Yeah, I do," I whispered, swallowing a lump in my throat. "I have dreams 'bout her all the time too." I looked down and closed my eyes, my shirt clenched tightly in my fist. I heard Angela move, then her arms slid around my waist and we just held each other for a long moment, sharing our pain. It took all of my willpower to pull myself back from the wave of black despair that had washed over me, but I managed it and let her go. "C'mon darlin', we got work to do."

She nodded and I kissed her, then we finished getting dressed and secured our campsite. I shouldered the pack containing the explosives and we set out for the base. Angela immediately scurried up the nearest tree, taking the high road as she preferred. In the mottled grays of her camouflage, she blended perfectly with the leaves and shadows up there. If I hadn't seen where she'd gone up for myself, I would have been hard pressed to pick her out with my eyes alone. But I didn't need to see her to know where she was. Even in the rain that still steadily fell, I could track her scent no matter where she went. I set off through the underbrush, letting my instincts take control. With very little effort on my part, I slipped through the tangled greenery, leaving few traces that a person had passed through. We moved as swiftly as the forest would allow; the only sounds we made could be passed off as native animals. It wasn't an easy trip, but we made decent time and found ourselves within sentry distance in just over an hour.

I paused just outside their range of hearing and tapped my com. "Hellcat, what's your twenty?"

"About fifteen yards ahead and to the south of you," she replied quietly.

"Whattaya see?"

"I've got sentries to either side of me, about fifteen feet apart. They have some kind of perimeter fence, but I can't hear a generator so I don't think it's powered."

"Any sign o' the weapons?"

"Negative Wolverine. There's some light in a couple of the outbuildings, but no movement within the compound."

"Copy that. Hold position an' wait for me."

"Roger Wolverine. Hellcat out." The com went silent and I moved quietly through the thinning brush, my senses taking in and processing thousands of bits of information every second. Insects and small frogs sang in the trees, each giving off their own peculiar scents. Night-blooming flowers perfumed the air, adding a layer of their own. Countless other sounds and scents recognized and discarded as irrelevant to the objective. But the sounds themselves told me more than the files ever could, based on how normal they were. The local wildlife was comfortable with the people around here, which meant they'd been here a good long time. They accepted the compound as part of the natural scenery, no longer threatened or confused by the sounds and smells coming from it. In the jungle like this, it's possible to use the sounds – or lack of sounds – of the local wildlife as a kind of alarm system. We had no such luck here.

I finally picked out Angela's scent among the rest, faint due to her being in the trees, and set out in her direction. I moved swiftly but silently through the forest, her scent growing stronger until I heard a low sound above me. I glanced into the tree and there she was, crouched on a branch and staring at something I still couldn't see from the ground. She motioned for me to join her, so I secured the pack on my back and climbed up next to her. She was still, yet tensed; if she had a tail, she would have been switching it back and forth. Something had her agitated that I hadn't seen yet. "Status?" I whispered.

"Two men left the central building just before you got here," she whispered back. "They had a little kid with them, handcuffed. He could barely walk."

I swore under my breath. "Where'd they take him?"

"One of the smaller buildings, third one on the left. I don't hear anything though, so I'm not sure what they're doing with him."

I turned my attention to the compound, scanning every inch of ground for some sign of activity. Was this kid one of the "weapons"? Or was he leverage for the continued cooperation of the "weapons"? Only one way to find out. "Ok, let's take care o' the sentries first. Quick an' quiet, no sense in alertin' anyone til we're already in there."

"Agreed." She turned her attention to me. "How are we gonna do this?"

"Well, knowin' they've got kids in there means we can't just blow the place an' go. You take the small buildings, check 'em for more kids, kill anyone that looks like a guard. If ya come across one that speaks English, make 'em tell ya what the kids are for before ya kill 'em."

"What about you?"

"I still haveta blow this place, but I'll get anyone out that deserves to be saved first. Meet me on the other side o' the compound when you're done. If I ain't there in ten minutes, take the kids an' go back to camp without me."

"Wolverine…" she said sharply.

I cut her off. "Don't argue with me! I don't know what I'll find in there an' it'll be up to you to keep the kids safe!"

"I don't like this one bit," she complained. "We shouldn't split up."

"Darlin', we ain't got a _choice_. There ain't enough time for both o' us to set the charges, get the 'weapons' out an' save the kids together."

She looked down and bit her lip. "I know. But I had to make my displeasure known all the same."

"Fine, it's noted." I scanned the compound again and turned back to her. "Now, if I ain't back at camp in four hours, go on without me. I'll find you, no matter what." She opened her mouth to protest again, but I placed a finger over her lips. "No arguin'. I don't think it'll be a problem, but I need to know you'll be safe." She glared at me, but nodded. "Good. I'm goin' low road. Sentries first, on my mark." She nodded again and I shinnied down the tree back to the ground. I took the pack off and stashed it under a huge fern, not wanting to chance a stray bullet blowing it to hell and me along with it. I slipped through the trees, a moving shadow among the rest until I scented the sentry. I tapped my com. "Hellcat, you in position?"

"Affirmative." Her tone was clipped; she was pissed at me and I would pay for it later.

"On my mark." I stalked closer to the man, his bald head shining in the moonlight, the scent of cigarette smoke drifting on the breeze. "Now!" I leapt from my cover, springing my claws with a snarl and the sentry whipped around to face me, but he never had a chance to raise his weapon. I thrust my claws into his throat and he went down, dead before he hit the ground. I slipped back into the trees and continued around the perimeter, only breaking cover long enough to kill the sentries. Ten minutes later, I met up with Angela on the other side of the compound. "Status?" I whispered.

"All clear," she said shortly.

I looked down at her, only to find that she was pointedly _not_ looking at me. "Hellcat…Angela."

Her head snapped up and she glared at me. "Code names only, Wolverine, you know that."

"Look, I ain't goin' in there unless I know you're gonna follow orders an' do what I told ya to do."

"What do you want me to say? That I'm okay with my husband going into gods only know what while I retreat? Well, I'm really _not _okay with that and nothing you say is going to change it."

"Hellcat, someone has to protect the kids. Why the hell are we doin' all o' this if it ain't for the kids?"

Her glare hardened. "That's not fair. Hell, we don't even know if Xavier has any kids at the mansion right now."

"But he might. An' we're 'bout to send him another batch o' people once we get outta here. But we ain't gonna save _anyone _if we stand here all night fightin' 'bout it."

Her posture relaxed a bit and she looked down. "You're right, I know you're right." She looked back into my eyes and I could see a touch of fear on her face. "But my place is at your side, damn it! I promised, remember?"

"Yeah, I do." I took her hand and stroked my thumb over her wedding ring. "An' you will be, even if you ain't right there. We'll be all right, trust me." She pressed her lips together, but nodded. I pulled her into my arms and kissed her soundly, then turned her around and swatted her playfully on the backside. "Now go, start on lookin' for the kids."

"Yes sir, Wolverine sir," she replied, then scuttled up a tree and disappeared into the night. I took a deep breath and circled back to where I'd left the explosives, hoping that the now-dead sentries hadn't been missed yet. Fortunately, it seemd that their absence had yet to be noticed and I was clear to enter the base.

I slid out a single claw and slowly cut a slit in the fence, wincing at the slight sound it made. A sound on the other side of the compound made me pause, but when no one came running my way I finished cutting and slipped through. I dashed quietly into the shadows formed by one of the small outbuildings and chanced a glance inside. What I saw turned my stomach and I knew I had to get this job done and quickly. There were kids in there, about a dozen of them, collared and chained to the floor. Their clothing was in tatters and they were curled up on thin pallets over the hard concrete. No matter how cloyingly warm it is outside, a concrete floor will leech the heat out of a body in minutes. There were no guards posted outside the building, but there wouldn't need to be. With them chained up like that, there was no way they'd be able to escape. I clenched my teeth on a snarl and tapped my com. "Wolverine to Hellcat, are you in position?"

"Almost. What's wrong?"

"Nothin' yet, but we gotta get this done an' soon."

"What's your twenty?"

"Just behind the shack near where we got the first sentries. It's full o' kids an' I'm bettin' the rest of 'em are too."

"Fuck me running," she spat. "How many?"

"I saw 'bout a dozen of 'em. There could be more that I couldn't see from the window."

"Wolverine, if there's that many in each of these huts, there's no way I can wrangle all of them."

"I know. Just take out anyone who's on patrol an' get anyone who escapes the main building unless it's one o' the 'weapons'."

"How will I know the difference?"

"Use your instincts."

She sighed heavily. "Copy that, Hellcat out."

I scanned the area around me, but still saw no sign of patrols. This struck me as a bit odd; after all, there were two other guerilla factions out there that these were actively fighting with, yet they didn't seem concerned that one of them would find this place. It was well hidden, yet not so well that we'd had any trouble getting satellite pictures of the compound. Then it occurred to me that maybe this wasn't their main base, but something akin to a weapons depot, close enough to the main base to be effective, but far enough away that no one thought to look for it. It didn't matter to me; my goal was simply to spring the people they had captive and blow the rest of them to hell.

I stalked around the outer perimeter, sticking close to the outbuildings to use the shadows as cover, but it wasn't necessary. I still never encountered another living person, but Angela had seen at least two and there had to be more. I hoped they were all in the main building; it would make my part of the job that much easier. Ideally, I could set the charges and get to the "weapons" to free them, then just blow everyone else up along with the structure itself. I decided that was the best plan of action as I approached the large building in the center.

I scurried to the back entrance in a crouch, my senses alert for any indication of surveillance, but I didn't hear or smell anything. The door itself was simply deadbolted, but there were several of those. I slid out a single claw and slipped the tip into the tiny crack between the door and the frame, working it in until I could slice through the locks. They gave with no resistance, being made of simple steel and no challenge for the adamantium. The door opened easily and I stepped inside. The corridor was dimly lit, the overhead lights giving a sickly yellowish cast to everything. I paused and scented the air, trying to figure out the best way to go. I had just started moving towards the end of the hall when the sound of booted feet froze me in my tracks. I looked around quickly for a place to hide, seeing only one other door I could go through. Luckily, it wasn't locked and I slipped into the room, closing the door softly behind me and engaging the lock. I pressed my ear to the door so I could hear what, if anything, these people had to say.

"And you are certain he detected intruders?" the first one said in rapid Spanish.

"Si," came the reply, "but he is saying he can not pinpoint their location, only that he felt strangers enter the compound."

"Damn it. We must try harder to find a telepath. That damn empath is all but useless."

"Should we deploy guards to search for them?"

"Si, two squads. Have one cover the children and the other do a sweep for these intruders." I listened as one set of feet retreated, but I could still hear the breathing of the other. As he approached the room I was in, his scent grew clearer, a mixture of sweat, gunpowder and cigarette smoke. He stopped just outside the door and tried the knob, then I heard the sound of keys being pulled out of a pocket. I moved to one side, pressing myself against the wall. Whoever this guy was, he wouldn't live long enough to raise an alarm. He turned the key in the lock and the door swung wide, letting in the dim light from the hallway. As he took his first step across the threshold, I grabbed him by the throat and slammed him up against the wall. His eyes went wide and the unmistakable stench of urine filled the small space when I popped my claws an eyeblink before shoving them into his chest. He gave one last rattling breath before going limp and I lowered the body to the floor.

I searched his pockets and came up with an identification card with a magnetic strip on the back. According to the name on the front, he was a captain, which I hoped gave him enough clearance to get anywhere in the building. I also took the keys out of the door and pocketed them as well. I dragged the corpse behind the small desk and let it flop back down. "You're just lucky ya didn't piss on my shoes, asshole," I growled down at him before leaving the office, locking the door behind me.

Once in the hallway, I tapped my com again. "Wolverine to Hellcat. Sitrep?"

"Cleared out one hut full of kids and sent them out to hide in the jungle. One of them was older than the others, so she's got them well in hand." She paused for a moment as though collecting herself. "Wolverine, they're all mutants, every one of them."

"What?" I was stunned by this revelation. Had we been wrong the whole time and the "weapons" were stored in those huts? "Say again Hellcat."

"All the kids are mutants, some of them pretty young to have powers already but they do. The older girl, she said her mother and father are mutants too and they're in there with you somewhere."

I swallowed a growl that was rising in my chest. "Were they usin' the kids too?"

"Negative. Apparently, these guys thought they were too young to fight unless it was absolutely necessary. I get the impression they were just waiting for them to get old enough to send out. And there's something else."

Oh, this just got better and better. "Do I even wanna know?"

"Not all of them are native to the region. Most of these kids are American."

"Hellcat, do they have the healing factor?" She didn't say anything for a long time and a chill ran down my spine. "Answer me! Do they have the healing factor?"

"Yes, they do." I cursed under my breath and rubbed my eyes. "All of them. I'm sorry Wolverine."

"Don't worry 'bout me. Get 'em outta here. Wolverine out." Our worst fear was confirmed. Weapon X wanted these people back because they were ready for bonding. And not being content to wait for their kids to manifest their powers naturally, they sped up the process, probably through a combination of physical and telepathic torture, so they could assimilate the healing factor sooner. Because that was the one thing they'd been unable to predict, in all the years of research and development. Giving the artificial healing factor to someone without an active X gene actually had the opposite effect and killed the host. No one knew why, but it was wholly dependant on the X gene for successful assimilation. That was one of the bits of information we'd gotten during our rampage over the past decade, something we'd only told to a select few people. It didn't make it any better in my eyes, because that meant that some poor bastards had been injected with this thing that keeps me alive and it killed them. I don't know how many they'd done it to before they figured out the X gene connection, but it didn't matter. The fact that they'd done it more than once was enough to make my blood boil.

I slipped the pack off my back and took out one of the tiny charges. It was about the size of a business card, but it packed a punch equal to half a pound of regular plastic explosives and was a lot more stable. I stuck it to the ceiling near the office, next to one of the dim lights and engaged the detonator. The tiny yellow light was almost invisible next to the light bulb, so I zipped up the pack and moved cautiously to the end of the hall. I scented the air, but didn't detect anyone in the vicinity, so I took out another charge and set it in the same way.

I continued my progress until I reached a dead end, then started back, but this time I checked out the doors on either side of the hallway. This was obviously a low-clearance area, open to everyone, and I set charges in every other room. Once I made it back to where I'd started, I checked in with Angela again. She reported that she'd met some resistance, but they hadn't lasted long and was in the process of freeing the last of the kids. All told, there were about thirty of them, which would make getting out of this tricky at best. I signed off with her and continued on my way.

At the other end of the hall, it branched off again to the left and right. I scented the air and finally caught my first whiff of people nearby. I followed the scent to the right and came across a door with a card reader next to it. I took out the card I'd taken from the captain and slid it through the reader, which turned green and let me in. The halls here were in slightly better repair with better lighting, which was both a blessing and a curse. Part of me hoped I wouldn't run into anyone, but the rest of me was really spoiling for a fight. As I approached the end of the hall, one of my wishes was granted.

I heard the sound of shouting, followed by the unmistakable sound of a taser and the screams of the one it was used on. I stashed my pack in a recessed alcove and raced to the end of the hall. The noises were coming from the room beyond and I could make out the sounds of their jeering taunts and the painful whimpers of their victim. I lowered my shoulder as I crashed into the door, slamming it into the wall beside it. Five heads whipped around at the noise, four of which belonged to soldiers in the same green jumpsuit the captain had been wearing. The fifth person was on the ground, curled into a ball, his face a mass of bruises that were clearing up at an alarming rate. I immediately dropped into a defensive crouch, a low growl rumbling in my chest.

"What the fuck do you want, gringo?" One of the soldier/torturers snapped in Spanish, pulling a nightstick out of a loop on his belt.

"To see your brains splattered on the wall, asshole," I snarled in the same language, popping my claws. "Let's dance."

To their credit, they only stayed intimidated by my claws for about half a second before the four of them swarmed towards me. I met them halfway, slashing the one that had spoken from chin to navel, though not fatally. Another one brought his club down on the back of my skull, where it snapped in half and only made me angrier. I spun into a roundhouse kick that whipped his head around hard enough to break his neck and he went down, unmoving. Another one jammed his taser into my kidney and electricity coursed through my skeleton. It hurt like fucking hell, but it wasn't near lethal and I used it to my advantage, jamming my claws into the fourth soldier's leg. He started jittering from the electricity now coursing through both our bodies and his buddy pulled the taser away. I ripped my claws to the side and the guy fell over hard, his leg all but severed as arterial spray bathed me and the remaining soldiers in crimson.

I turned to remaining two, who still hadn't figured out that a strategic retreat was in their best interests. The first one came at me swinging, landing a perfect punch on the point of my chin. His fingers broke with a sound like snapping twigs and he screamed, cradling his hand to his chest. I spun to meet the last one just as he thrust forward with his club, hitting me right in the solar plexus and my breath went out me in a rush. Before I had a chance to recover, he jammed his taser into my neck. It still wasn't nearly lethal, but the pain on top of being completely winded brought me to my knees. Before I could bring my claws to bear, the guy they'd been torturing came off the floor with a roar of his own and grabbed the soldier on either side of his head. With a snarl, he broke the man's neck and let the body fall to the ground.

I remained hunched over for a bit while I got my breath back. Healing factor or no, it still takes a moment for it to return when someone's lucky enough to hit me in the areas unprotected by adamantium. But I still recover faster than a normal human would, which was a good thing because one soldier remained and from the sound of it, he'd recovered enough to go to town on the guy who'd just become my unwitting ally. I leapt to my feet and charged him, hitting him low and slamming him into the wall. He tried to get his taser up with his good hand to jolt me again, but I sliced the hand off at the wrist, then retracted my claws and grabbed him by the face. With a single powerful thrust, I slammed his head into the concrete behind him, shattering the skull and spilling blood and brain matter. I let him drop and kicked the corpse for good measure. "Told ya, asshole."

I wiped the blood from my face with my forearm, then turned to the mutant in the room with me. He was again curled up on the floor, but the new bruises on his face were already clearing up. I started towards him and he looked up with fear in his eyes. "P-please, don't k-kill me!" He stammered in English.

I crouched down in front of him. "I ain't gonna kill ya, bub," I replied and grabbed his arm, hauling him to his feet. "What's your name?"

"Jake. I, uh, don't remember my last name." He looked down as though ashamed.

I snorted bitterly. "Yeah, they like to do that." As soon as I was sure he was steady on his feet, I turned back to the corpses and started going through their pockets. "No code name yet?"

"Pardon?" He asked, a bit confused, then seemed to get it. "Oh, um, no not yet. They said I wouldn't get one unless I survived the rest of the procedure."

I nodded silently, pocketing more identification cards and rings of keys on the off chance these guys had better clearance than the captain had. "Yeah well, they ain't gonna get that far on ya." I stood up and looked him over, but he seemed to have healed nicely. "So besides the forced healin' factor, what else do ya do?"

"Mostly, I'm an empath, but I'm a bit stronger than most people."

Ah, so that's why he was getting the L.A. cop treatment from those guys. He must be the one that couldn't tell them more than the fact there were intruders on base. I walked over to him with a keycard and a set of keys. "Jake, listen to me. I want ya to go to wherever they're keepin' the rest o' ya an' get 'em outta here. There's a hole in the fence near the northern edge o' the compound. Go about a klick into the jungle an' wait for me."

"I can't leave, they have my children!" He wailed desperately. "That's the only reason we cooperated with them!"

"No worries bub. My partner's outside right now gettin' 'em outta here. You just tell her Wolverine sent ya, she'll know you're friendly by that alone."

"And then what? You work for the people who did this to me, you have the same tags I had!" He took on a fighting stance. "I won't let you take us back there!"

"Look, I ain't got time to argue with ya, all right? We got no intention of takin' ya back to 'em. But we are gonna need you to all play dead so we have a reason why we didn't bring ya in."

"Play dead?"

"Yeah. See, we were told there were stolen weapons here. Wasn't til we got close enough to find bodies tore apart that we knew for certain the weapons were people." I went to the door and glanced down the hall, but apparently the little skirmish had gone unnoticed. "We got our own reasons for doin' what we do, but we ain't gonna let ya go back to that. Now go, get the others outta here. I have to blow this place."

He didn't argue anymore; he simply dashed out the door and around the corner. I went and retrieved my pack, setting charges along the hallway. A few minutes later I met back up with Jake, followed by about a dozen other people. They were all mutants, some with very obvious physical mutations. One guy looked like a shorter Sabretooth but with black hair and he smelled a lot better. All of them were a bit bloody, but none of it seemed to be their own. I hoped that meant they'd taken care of most of the rest of the opposition, which would make the rest of my job go by faster. Jake handed me the keycard without a word and the lot of them left without another word. I went down the hall he'd come from, still setting charges as I went along. I eventually came to another dead end hall, but this one had an elevator in the wall. I stepped on and used the keycard in the slot next to the door, the only feature in the tiny box. It immediately descended one level and doors slid open.

I was met with a scene best described as pure carnage. Being freed from their captors and assured their children were safe, they took out their rage on the men who had used them so badly. I didn't blame them one bit; I was also counting the days until I could do the same thing. I stepped over bodies, unable to avoid the large pools of blood that filled the hallway and made my way deeper into the complex. I eventually came across the cells the mutants had been kept in and swore softly. They were about the size of a kennel that might be found at an animal shelter and not nearly as clean. More bodies lined the hall here, but I again ignored them and continued my work.

Once I was finished, I stalked down the remaining hallway. There was a single door at the end of it, but none of the keycards I had would open it. I didn't want to take the time to go through the pockets of all the dead men, so I popped my claws and ripped the thing off its hinges. As I tossed it aside, gunfire erupted and bullets peppered my torso. I dove to the floor, flinging the pack back into the hallway as I did so, then rolled and sprang to my feet. I was in a large room, roughly circular in shape and about twenty-five feet across. To the left was a huge bank of closed-circuit monitors, each showing a different part of the interior of the building. None of them showed a view of the outside, which I thought was extremely stupid. Had they known we were out there, they could have slowed our mission down by about fifteen minutes.

Placed sporadically through the room were desks with computers on them, now dark. Five of them had been overturned, the electronics shattered beyond repair and it was from behind this sketchy cover that the shots had come. I let my claws spring forth again and rushed the nearest soldier as he came out from his cover to shoot at me again. I leapt over the desk and buried both sets of claws into his chest with a roar of rage and the rest stood up and opened fire. The stink of overheating metal and gunpowder filled the room, the flare from the muzzles of their automatic weapons momentarily blinding me. But it didn't matter, I already knew where they all were and I dove for the next victim. He brought the butt of his rifle around and whipped me across the face as I lashed out with my claws, severing both of his hands. They fell to the floor with the rifle still clutched in them as the soldier screamed in horror. I plunged my claws through his face and he fell next to his gun.

Footsteps approached me from either side, so I spun to my left and kicked out, shattering the kneecap of the closest soldier. He cried out as he fell, but still tried to bring his rifle up to shoot me point blank. I shredded it with my claws, but before I could finish him off someone hit me in the kidneys with their own rifle, hard enough to bring tears of pain to my eyes. I kicked backwards and heard a sickening crack and a howl of pain. I slashed my claws down to finish off the first guy before turning to the face the one that hit me. He was screaming and clutching his thigh, a bit of gleaming white bone visible through a tear in his pants. I stomped on his leg mercilessly and he turned visibly green. Before he could vomit, I brought my claws down and through his throat, severing arteries, his windpipe and his spinal cord, killing him instantly. I turned quickly to the rest of the room, knowing these couldn't be the only ones in there. I stalked to the next desk and found a man with a neat bullet hole just over his right eye. He'd either been caught in the crossfire or by a ricochet off one of my bones. Either way, he was dead and needed no further consideration. I turned to the last desk and walked casually towards it. There was the last soldier, a kid no more than twenty or so, clutching his rifle in one hand and his crucifix necklace in the other. He was praying under his breath in rapid Spanish and apparently hadn't heard my approach. I nudged him with my toe and with a gasp, he pushed himself away from me.

"Please don't kill me, God, please don't kill me!" He babbled in his native tongue. I retracted the claws on my right hand and hauled him up by the front of his shirt. "Please don't kill me, devil, please!"

I positioned my left claws right in front of his eyes. "Did they all get out?" He shook his head and continued to plead with me, so I gave him a rough shake. "Did all the mutants get out?" I shouted.

"Si, si," he stammered, "all of them escaped!"

"How did you get 'em in the first place?"

"W-we heard th-there was a l-laboratory in Costa Rica. W-we paid a group th-there to steal them!"

"What about the kids? Where did they come from?"

"They were there too! P-please don't kill me!"

"How'd they get 'em outta the lab?"

"I-I don't know! I heard there were bribes, but I don't know to who!"

"Where's the rest o' your army?"

"Four kilometers east of here is the main camp. We were only protecting the weap…mutants."

I released him and he fell to the floor in a heap. He scuttled backwards until he hit the wall and stayed there, sobbing and praying. I retracted my claws, retrieved my pack and set the rest of the charges, then turned to the wreck in the corner. He started gibbering again in rapid Spanish, too fast for me to make out a word. I hauled him back to his feet and he again pleaded with me to spare him.

"I ain't gonna kill ya, bub," I growled and he looked at me in surprise. I just smiled. "I'm gonna let the explosion do that for me." A look of horror crossed his face and I gave him a brutal head butt. His eyes rolled back in his head and I let him drop. I retrieved his weapon, along with those of the others I'd killed in here, and made my way back to the surface.

Once outside, I noticed the small knots of fallen bodies here and there and smiled to myself. My wife can be wonderfully vicious when she wants to be and since there were children involved here, I'm sure she was extremely vicious indeed. I went into each of the outbuildings and set a charge in each of them, then left the pack, keycards and key rings in the last one before shouldering the scavenged rifles and leaving the compound. I paused and scented the air, having no trouble at all picking up Angela's scent amongst everything else. My body ached where the bullet holes were still healing and a low ache in my back told me I'd probably piss blood the next time I went, but I was otherwise all right. I turned in the direction of my woman's scent and followed it for a little while before determining that she had followed orders and gone back to our tiny campsite. I strode through the forest, stealth no longer an issue, and once I was about half a klick away I pulled a small detonator out of my pocket along with a cigar. I lit my stogie and inhaled deeply, then thumbed the detonator. A huge fireball bathed the night in scarlet and orange and I smiled. I like blowing things up, it's almost as fun as sex or fighting. Almost.

I strolled through the forest casually, as though I hadn't just torn through a dozen guerillas and blown up their base. It took me far less time to get back to camp than it had to get to the base and Angela was sitting next to a small fire she'd started. She leapt to her feet, claws out, as I approached, but slid them away and ran into my arms when she saw it was me. I held her for a long moment, simply enjoying the way she felt in my arms. After a moment, I kissed the top of her head and she stepped away. "Gods Wolverine, you look like holy hell," she said, taking in the blood that covered me from head to toe.

"Yeah, an' I feel like it too," I replied. I went to our tent and grabbed soap and a towel. "I gotta wash this blood off o' me, it's makin' me itch."

"What, in front of the kids?"

I looked around and saw that the other adults had sorted out the children and they were all in little huddles throughout the clearing. The smaller kids were already asleep, but some of the older ones were talking to their parents in low voices. I stopped at the edge of the stream and sighed. "I'll leave my boxers on, all right?" I took a good long look at where she stood, scowling at me, and she appeared to be perfectly immaculate. "You gonna tell me you didn't have a bath soon as you got back?"

"Well, yeah. But I left my tank top on too."

"Well I ain't gonna do that. Be glad I'm leavin' the boxers on."

She shook her head, but left me to my bath. The stream wasn't deep or wide, but it wasn't ice cold either which was nice. I cleaned myself up as well as I could and wrapped the towel around my waist before going back to the tent. Once inside, I pulled on clean clothes and stashed the bloody ones in a bag that we would burn before we left. I went back outside and joined Angela back near the fire. "Logan," she whispered, "we can't walk through miles of jungle with this many people."

"An' we can't leave 'em here either," I replied as I looked around. "An' I don't know 'bout you, but I ain't givin' 'em back to Weapon X."

"What are we gonna do with them?"

I shook my head and poked at the fire; I had no more idea than she did. We sat there for a few seconds before I heard footsteps approaching. We looked up and one of the women they'd had captive was standing over us, a bag in her hand. "May I sit down?" She asked tentatively.

"Sure," Angela said and made room for her on the log. The woman sat down with as much space between her and Angela as she could get without falling to the ground. "What's your name?"

"Jessica," she replied, looking at her hands. "I don't know my last name anymore. They made me forget it somehow."

We both nodded; we knew what that was like. "So Jessica, what do you need?" I asked.

"I couldn't help but overhear you talking a minute ago," she started and we looked at her in surprise. She gave a tiny smile of apology. "Sorry, I couldn't help it. Extra sharp hearing is…was my only mutation." We nodded in understanding, since she'd been given the healing factor along with the rest of them. "Anyway, I took this off one of the guards after he was dead, will it help?" She pulled a large yellow phone out of the bag.

Angela reached out and took it from her and smiled. It was a satellite phone, much better than a cellular phone out here in the middle of nowhere. "Yes Jessica, it will, very much. Thank you."

"What's going to happen to us?"

I looked at Angela and nodded. "Well, we're going to call a friend of ours, who will call another friend of ours and he'll send someone to pick you up."

She looked up sharply. "Pick us up? You're sending us _back_ there?"

"No! We're not." Angela placed a gentle hand on her arm. "We have another friend who only wants to help mutants. We stayed with him for a while, but then something happened and we decided we had to come back to Weapon X to take care of something."

"What?"

I shook my head. "Sorry darlin', the less ya know, the safer you'll be. Just believe us when we say you ain't comin' back with us."

She nodded, but still seemed dubious, so Angela took over the conversation again. "Listen, I know you don't have any reason to trust us. Gods know I wouldn't in your position, but what happened to you already is just the beginning. They'll do more to you than you can imagine, your children too if they get the chance. But we won't let that happen. We can't let there be any more like us than there already are. Just meet with our friends when they come to get you and if you don't trust them, they'll take you anywhere you want to go. But it might be best if you just listen to what they have to say first, all right?"

"Oh, it's not that I don't trust you. I know who you both are." We looked at her, surprised again and she smiled. "I saw you on television once, a while back. The avalanche in Colorado?" We nodded, dumbfounded. "You did a pretty good job of keeping away from the cameras, but there was one shot of you two outside a Red Cross tent. It wasn't very long, but I'd recognize that hair anywhere." Angela stifled a giggle and I scowled at her. "What I don't understand is why you're here and the others aren't."

Angela bit her lip and looked down and I took a deep breath against the pain in my heart every time I thought of Evie. "We ain't with the X-Men anymore, Jessica. See, these Weapon X people, they're responsible for our daughter dyin'. We left the X-Men an' went back to Weapon X cuz we're hopin' to make 'em pay for that someday."

"So you're like undercover?"

"Somethin' like that." It wasn't the whole story and I doubted that she'd say anything to anyone else, but she didn't need to know any more. "The friends we're sendin' to get ya _are_ the X-Men, so you should be able to trust 'em just fine."

She nodded and stood up. "That's good enough for me. Should I tell the others?" I shook my head and she nodded again. "All right. But for what it's worth, I hope you can kill those monsters someday. I wasn't always like this, I always thought that people could be reasoned with. But the day they took me and my children, tortured us…not anymore. Kill them and think of me." She walked back to her family and sat down, gathering a little girl into her lap.

I looked at my wife. "You all right?"

"Yeah," she said, wiping tears from her eyes. "I'm gonna go call Bennington, have him call the Professor." I nodded and watched as she disappeared into the darkness. I looked over at the families scattered around the clearing and my heart clenched in my chest again. Maybe we hadn't been able to save our own child, but we saved theirs and it was enough. It had to be, otherwise I didn't know if I could go on.

* * *

**AN: **Seven chapters down and we're about a third of the way through this story...:) Special thanks to my beta team - Zac, Turiel Tincdaniel and DBK(tm)...no more extra thanks for DBK though, since he hasn't actually begged for more in a while...Super Special thanks to my readers, who have stuck by me and this story for literally hundreds of thousands of words (over 400,000 to this series alone!)...And Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were Andromeda Jones and theNightEnchantress...:) Miss Jones: I'm not telling if it's a boy or a girl! You'll find out later, with everyone else! And technically, the story IS complete...i'm just evil and make everyone wait...:)

**I'm still hoping to hear from new people! If anyone would like a new chapter earlier than usual, just click the "go" button, say hello or something and i'll post a new chapter as soon as i receive it!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Special Note:** This chapter is dedicated to the cable guy, who came today and gave me a cable modem...:) I'm so happy i could cry!

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Chapter 8

(Jubilee)

That Bennington guy called us a couple weeks ago and told us we had a rescue mission in Central America. The Professor hadn't picked up any major activity down there on Cerebro, so we didn't know what he was talking about, but we went anyway, taking all three jets like he told us to. Imagine our surprise when we landed and found over thirty mutant families standing there, looking underfed and more than a little wary, but alive. Even more shocking was the note one of them had from Logan. It just said "we're fine, these people are dead. Hide them well." Nothing about when they'd be back.

It's so weird being in the mansion without everyone here. And by "everyone", I mean Rogue, Storm, Sam, Remy, Logan, Angela and Evie. Rogue and Kitty and me, we were like best friends and now there's only two of us. Storm was the one who came to get me back when I was just a kid and I'd run away from home. She knew what it was like to live on the streets – ok, I was living in a mall, but same difference – but it was still really hard. Now she's gone and it's just weird to think that she might not come back. At least we have a good screening process for new students now, so we don't have to worry about another Anissa Hallett happening and finding out that Sam and Storm aren't really dead. Of course, the fact that every new kid here actually applied and paid tuition this year helped, since all the stuff that happened after the Colorado avalanche sort of changed the way people look at us. It took them long enough to figure out that we're just people too. Yeah, we have these powers and stuff, but we're not that much different otherwise. Now if only Magneto and his stupid bunch would get it through their thick skulls that it is possible to live together, life would be so much better.

Sure, old Mags is still in prison or whatever, but his stupid "Brotherhood" is still out there pulling the same shit over and over. If those idiots would get their heads out of their asses and look around, they'd see that mutants aren't being totally persecuted anymore. Sure, there's still those Friends of Humanity people and a couple other groups, but normal people have their own hate groups too and no one does anything about those either. So I guess it's fair to say that the Brotherhood is the first anti-normal-human hate group, since that's all they ever seem to do. That and go after mutants they think have betrayed their own kind.

Which makes me wonder what they'd make of it if they knew what's really going on with Logan and Angela and those Weapon X people. The Professor had a big meeting with all of the teams, even Gamma, to let us know everything that had been discovered during the Deadly Trio's rampage on the Weapon X bases. He told us about who the Director really is, why he's done all the stuff he's done and why Logan and Angela went back to them. He told us about the artificial healing factor that they've used on other mutants, to make them all indestructible like Logan is. It's frightening to think about, because if they really wanted to, they could bust in here again, gas everyone to sleep and spirit us all off to their bases and have their wicked way with us. But the worst part? If the Weapon X people really do make themselves an army of Logans, Magneto might be the only person who could stop any of them. Maybe Seth and Simon could help a little and maybe Polaris too, but Mags is the only one I know for sure that could do it.

I sure hate to think that we might have to all fight on the same side with him, but I suppose it's better than the alternative.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Rogue)

Things are so different now that Storm's pregnant. We're all worried about her, because she can't seem to stop throwing up and the smell of eggs or fish cooking sets her off every time. So no more omelets or jambalaya for us, I suppose, which sucks but we'll live. Otherwise she's doing fine and can hardly wait to have her little one. Evie offers every day to see if it's a boy or a girl, but they keep politely turning her down. She just smiles and goes back to whatever she was doing before. I'm betting she already knows.

Speaking of Evie, she's doing so well with her powers, she can see things consciously up to two weeks in advance. She says if she goes any further, things get "fuzzy" and hard to see. But we'd told her before to write down things that she saw and seal them up, then if they happened she should tell us. It's been working like a charm and she's a true credit to the Professor and his teaching. I'm hoping that once all of this is over and we're back at the mansion, she'll train as a teacher herself, in case we get another precog through there. Sure, they're rare as hell, but even if we only ever see one more in our lives, they'll need the help Evie can give them.

In the meantime, we've continued her regular schooling as best as we can, which helps to pass the time. We've relaxed a bit in regards to leaving the house, making sure to get out at least a couple times a week. She's got a few friends at the park who all wanted to know why she's never in school, but she just said she's home schooled and they left it at that. Sometimes she went to their houses for a couple hours, sometimes they came here. Except for her parents being missing, which she wisely never told anyone, life was almost normal for her.

But the one thing we all want to know, we're all afraid to ask her. We know that she's working so hard on her powers so she can see when Logan and Angela will be coming back to her. It's what we want to know too. But we don't want to ask her, because to be perfectly honest, we're afraid of what she'll say.

I can't speak for everyone else, but I'm afraid she'll say they're never coming back. And I just can't live with that.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_Six months, one week, four days, eleven hours and nineteen minutes since mom and dad sent me away._

_Aunt 'Roro's sick all the time. It wouldn't be so bad, except I have something that Uncle Atlas calls "sympathetic vomiting", which is really a fancy way of saying I throw up if I see or hear someone else doing it. It's not my fault, it's gross! But the worst part is how she can't stand the smell of eggs anymore. It's not fair! Uncle Remy makes the best scrambled eggs ever and now I can't have them anymore. I hope she gets over this and fast._

_I can see a lot farther in the future now, a little over two weeks before it gets really fuzzy. And it's really like that, too. All the pictures are really blurry and the sounds and words are really hard to hear. But I bet I can get it to go farther if I just try a little harder. I'm starting to figure out what Uncle Charles meant when he said I had to focus. It's just like using the microscope Aunt Rogue got me for science lessons. I have to use the right lens to make the little things on the slides come up clear. So I just imagine my mind is just like that, a bunch of different lenses and if I can just find the right one, I can see farther away. Anyway, it makes sense to me._

_I don't see so much of mom and dad anymore and I don't know why. It's scaring me a little, because I'm afraid it means they're forgetting about me and I'm pretty sure that it's them thinking about me that makes it easier for me to find them, if it makes any sense. But if I sit really still and think about nothing BUT them, I can see them a little, just flashes. They were in a jungle a few weeks ago, and in another big city just after that. Now I think they're in a desert. At least I see a lot of sand but no water, so it has to be a desert, right? I told Aunt Rogue about it, but she said there's so many deserts in the world that it would be really hard to figure out which one they're in. Whatever it is they're doing, I hope they're not there for very long._

_But I'm still dreaming things that are a lot farther away than two weeks. I think it's because the lenses in my head work better when I'm not thinking about it. I don't know why else it would be that way. But I did see me back at school with Wendy and everyone else, and a whole huge bunch of new people, even grown ups. Mom and dad weren't right there in the picture, but they were around somewhere. Everyone seemed really happy, so I guess that's something that'll happen a lot later. But just like when I saw the bad men coming for all that time, I can't tell when this is gonna happen. It's summery out, so maybe it's right before or right after school starts, but I'm not sure. All I know is that I saw me back home and everything was all right. I hope that dream comes true really soon._

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Angela)

Colonel Sidowski accepted our report that we were unable to retrieve any of the "weapons" from Central America without question. The fact that we got a bunch of them to pose as corpses in a clearing that we artfully destroyed and got a few pictures of them helped immensely. Logan provided the blood and we shot their clothes up pretty good against some fallen trees, so it really did appear that the guerillas executed them rather than let them fall into enemy hands. It was a necessary deception and we were never asked anything about it again. Curiously, the occasional telepath we ran into didn't even try to scan us for the truthfulness of the statement, not even Phoenix. It was that, more than anything, that cemented my belief that we were not just accepted back, but trusted as well.

We were no longer given any files for the "coffee and cake" missions, the ones that are so easy a blind dog with one leg missing could do them. No, those went to Shatter and Sylph, since they were the newbies. Demon and Vulture went on covert demolition missions mostly, while Asp and Tigress usually got intel gathering and the occasional assassination. They were leaving the really hard stuff to us, which suited us just fine. After Central America, we had a hard target termination in Rome, followed by another in Sydney a couple weeks later. We then had a week off to begin training of another pair of succesfully bonded operatives before being sent to Egypt for yet another assassination. It was so much like the first Bad Old Days, it was like we never left.

What didn't escape our notice was the increase in operatives. It seemed like another pair showed up every six weeks or so, which meant they had definitely upped the program. We'd thought that losing the thirty-odd people who were "executed" in Central America might slow them down a bit, but we were obviously wrong. Somewhere, the Director had upped "production" on his weapons and wanted them trained as quickly as possible. This did not bode well for the future and I sincerely wished I knew what he was planning.

But before I could worry about that for more than a few days, a nameless private showed up with a summons from Dr. Lee, who we hadn't heard from since just after we first arrived. After his initial conversation with Logan, the closest we'd gotten to him had been a memo ordering us to the infirmary to give blood samples. Since then, not a peep. But orders were orders and we went to lab six to meet with him.

I'd almost forgotten how small Dr. Lee was, maybe an inch or so taller than me at the most. But his face was kind - unlike most of the people around here - and he smiled warmly when we walked in. "Ah, I see you received my note!" He exclaimed, crossing the small lab to greet us. He shook both of our hands, then gestured for us to sit down on a pair of stools sitting next to a table. A microscope and a computer sat right next to me and I took great care not to bump either of them. Once we were settled, he smiled again. "As I'm sure you'll remember, I asked the two of you for some blood samples some months ago to analyze in an attempt to help solve the heavy metal poisoning problem," he began, clearly in his element while delivering this lecture. "It was my belief that there were certain structural differences in your white blood cells that may have been the answer to the problem. However, it seems I could not have been further from the truth."

"Whattaya mean?" Logan asked, narrowing his eyes. "Are you sayin' that we're gonna wind up with it too?"

"Not all, Mr. Logan." He turned around and picked up a file, paging through it for a moment before pulling out a single sheet. "Now, I'm sure this looks like so much mumbo-jumbo to the two of you, but it will all make sense in a moment."

He handed the sheet to Logan and I peered over his shoulder. It appeared to be a table or a graph of some sort, with the names of all the operatives up the left side and some kind of codes at the bottom. I was a little surprised to see names on there of past operatives that were either dead, presumed so or listed as "missing" (Totem). Only six names had every column marked: Logan, Totem, Silver Fox, Deathstryke, Kestrel and me. The rest had all but one or (in Tigress' and Sabretooth's case) two columns marked.

I shook my head, completely out of my depth and sat back. Logan handed the paper back to Dr. Lee. "What's all this mean?" He asked.

"Most of it's not important," the doctor replied. He pointed to the column that most of the others had blank. "It's this part I want to direct your attention to. You two, along with the other four marked in this column, seem to have an extra white blood cell. It's unclear to me if it's something you were born with or if it's something your own healing factors developed to handle the poisoning, but without at least one more living person to test the theory, I can't be certain."

"What's this column for?" I asked, indicating the one that Tigress and Sabretooth had blank in addition to the other one.

"Ah, that one." He cleared his throat uncomfortably. "As the adamantium leeches into the bloodstream, it causes subtle changes to the body's chemistry. In you two, this is no big deal because your special white blood cells target the adamantium molecules and essentially consume them. I would guess that they'd do the same with any other heavy metal that was introduced to your systems. Like other heavy metals, adamantium bonds to other cells in the body, preventing them from functioning properly. However, it also – for lack of a better term – collects in the brain, specifically in the synaptic gap. Once there, it basically paralyzes normal brain function until about all that's left are the autonomic functions and basic survival instincts."

"So what you're sayin' is, they wind up with nothin' but a head full o' metal?" Logan asked, nodding as though something finally made sense to him.

"Essentially, yes. Not a solid mass, but once the impairment takes hold, there's no way to reverse it." He put the sheet back in the file and set it aside. "Now, if you'll turn to the computer behind you, I'd like to show you something else." We shifted around so we could see the screen and the doctor typed something on the wireless keyboard next to him. Half a dozen images appeared on the screen, each one labeled on the upper left with a numbered code. I had no trouble finding my code along with Logan's, but I didn't know offhand who the others were. The images looked like slides, since they resembled nothing more than a bunch of cells all smashed together. Dr. Lee arranged himself so he could point at the screen with a slender silver pen he produced from his pocket. "Okay, this is your slide," he said, confirming my suspicion, "and this is yours, Mr. Logan. As you can see, they are microscopically identical."

"With all due respect, they all pretty much look the same to me," I said dryly.

"At first glance, yes. But let me point something out to you." He indicated a cell cluster on Logan's slide, then did the same on mine. "It's these cells I wish to draw your attention to. Now, look at the others." We did and sure enough, those cells didn't appear on the slides. I nodded in understanding and the doctor beamed. "These are the cells you and the others have that the rest don't."

"Can you isolate them? Maybe clone them or something?"

"No, I can't and I've tried under orders from the Director himself. No, these cells only appear in you two and no one else who is currently an _active_ operative."

His phrasing didn't escape our notice. "Whattaya mean by that?" Logan asked, his voice full of suspicion.

He sighed and shut the computer off again. "Mr. Logan, the Weapon X program has been accelerated. Shatter and Sylph were the first off the line and I know you've seen more arriving at six-week intervals. Sadly, the increase continues and there will be new ones every four weeks until he has the numbers he wants."

"An' how many would that be?"

He frowned, as though debating whether or not to tell us. "Two thousand," he finally said. "And I know for a fact that we are only receiving about an eighth of the finished mutants at this facility."

I felt the blood drain from my face. From what he was telling us, Area 51 would be at maximum capacity within the year. "What percentage of them will have problems with the poisoning?"

"It's hard to say," he replied, picking up the file again and paging through it. "As it stands now, with the samples I have access to from both current and past operatives, about one fourth."

"Have any o' the ones with the artificial healin' factor gotten those weird cells too?" Logan asked. He raised an eyebrow when the doctor shook his head. "So it could be a lot higher?"

"I'm afraid so. And the augmented mutants coming out of the program with the artificial factor outnumber the subjects with a natural one by almost a hundred to one."

If it was at all possible, I felt myself go paler still. Out of all the artificially enhanced operatives, only a handful had any chance of throwing off the poisoning as well as Logan and I. "An' the natural ones?" Logan asked. "How many o' them might survive the metal poisonin'?"

"Again, according to my calculations, maybe a quarter." He tossed the file back on the table. "But that's being extremely generous. Only Sabretooth has an equal or better healing factor than you, Mr. Logan, and we only have one other with your wife's resurrection ability, another woman in fact. We won't know for certain for several years in any case and the Director is determined to have his army up and running by this time next year."

I was shocked, confused and chilled to the core, a sick feeling settling into my stomach. "Dr. Lee, why are you telling us this?" I asked, a slight tremor in my voice.

"I have my reasons," he replied, toying with his pen. "I've also recently made an unexpected ally around here, a man I believe you know by name of Grant." We both tensed, but didn't say anything. "He didn't tell me much, only that it was in my best interest to forward this research to an email address he assured me was one hundred percent secure. It wasn't presented as a threat, but he was rather insistent about it. Would you know anything about that?"

Now it was quid pro quo time. He'd given us a great deal of information about the Director's plans, but was it safe to tell him about the real reason we were there? I lowered my eyes, letting Logan make the decision. "Yeah, maybe a little. He's kinda a friend of a friend. Why?"

"I got the impression that it was rather important that this information be kept somewhere away from here, for security purposes."

"Yeah, you could say that." He crossed his arms and scowled. "But I ain't sayin' nothin' else. Don't trust the security 'round here."

"I understand, but you needn't worry." He pulled open a drawer and showed us a small device we were actually familiar with. About the size of a deck of cards, it was designed to broadcast white noise that basically blanketed any frequency, rendering bugs and other surveillance deaf or blind. "We are quite alone."

"Well, that's good to know," Logan said, giving the doctor an appreciative nod. "If ya got the impression it was for security, he didn't mean personal. He meant national."

The doctor fumbled his pen and it rolled underneath my stool. I bent over to retrieve it, but I noticed some engraving on the barrel as I handed it back. He snatched it away from me, but not before I read it. "To Uncle Dan, Happy Birthday. Love, Jubilation." I now knew why the good doctor was here. "Oh my gods," I breathed, "Jubilee's your niece."

"What? How?" He stammered.

I shook my head, a strange half-memory emerging from the back of my mind. "Jubilee. I-_we_ know her."

His eyes narrowed. "How do you know her, Mrs. Logan?"

"Back before we came back here, we were kind of with this mutant team. She was one of them, a student, learning to control her powers." I looked at him and he was visibly frightened. "No, Dr. Lee it's all right. We won't say anything."

"No, you don't understand," he said, collapsing onto a stool of his own. "She's the reason I'm here. Before all of...this," he gestured to the lab, "I was a well respected immunologist in California. I had caught wind of a rumor that someone was working on a so-called 'cure' for mutation and did my best to discourage that research, because there's no point in it. Mutation is simply evolution at work and trying to get rid of it can only be detrimental to the overall survival of the species. Suddenly, I found myself blacklisted, my research grants dried up almost overnight. Then one day, I received a letter with a picture of my niece, saying if I didn't call this certain number she would be 'taken care of'. Since the picture included crosshairs centered over her face, I knew what they meant by that. What else could I do? They obviously knew she was a mutant and how to find her. So, I made the call and here I am."

The half-formed memory still tickled the back of my mind, but I couldn't call up anything more than a vague impression that Jubilee only had one person in her whole family she ever spoke to. It must be this doctor, but why couldn't I get more than that? I shook my head again. "Dr. Lee, please, whatever you discover, send it on. It might be more important than you know."

"Do you mind if I ask why?"

"I can't tell you. I don't really know for sure myself. But believe us when we say that we'll make sure you get out of here when the time is right."

He slumped a bit, but in relief. "If anyone else here said that to me, I wouldn't believe them. But you two?" He shook his head and smiled. "I trust you with my life."

He stood up and we followed suit. "Keep workin' on this, doc," Logan said. "It might be the ace in the hole we'll need someday."

"Don't worry, I will."

"Oh, an' before I forget, how's the other project goin'?"

"Slowly. They keep me so busy with this one I don't have much time for the other." He shrugged. "I suppose I'll worry about it later."

Logan nodded and we left the lab. I wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but I knew it couldn't be good.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A few days later, we were sent on another assignment somewhere in the Middle East. I didn't pay much attention to exactly where we were, since most of the Middle East is hot, dry and torn up from decades of fighting amongst themselves, so it all looks the same to me. We completed our mission in under forty-eight hours, but a sandstorm prevented our extraction team from retrieving us so we had to hole up in a hotel in Lebanon to wait it out. Amazingly, the television still worked, so we stayed in bed much of the time with its low noise in the background. I was dozing off in Logan's arms near the end of the second day when he sat straight up in bed with a curse. "What?" I asked, looking around. "What's going on?"

"Sh!" He said, turning up the television a little bit. It was tuned to some breaking news story, the newscaster speaking in Arabic (I think). Logan understood the language, but I didn't, not being gifted with his polyglot abilities. After the news alert was over, he turned the television off and cursed again. "Damn it! We shoulda killed him the first day!"

"What? Logan, tell me what's happened!"

"There was an attack on an embassy in France. The X-Men went to help 'cause several unknown mutants were involved." He looked at me and his eyes were like chips of green ice. "Cyclops got shot. They don't know if he made it."

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**AN:** Heh heh...just in case you didn't think i was evil before, here's a cliffie for ya:) Not saying another word...:) Special thanks to my beta team of Zac, Turiel Tincdaniel and DBK(tm)...Super Special thanks to all of my readers...and Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were theNightEnchantress and Andromeda Jones!! Miss Jones: You flatter me! But thanks for thinking so well of my work...:) Good to hear from you!

**Now, if anyone would like to wait less than 3 or 4 days for an update and you've NEVER reviewed one of my stories, feel free to do so now! I'll post a new chapter as soon as i receive the review, i promise!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Special Note: **Special thanks to **immrlucky** for stepping up and reviewing...:) So as my way of saying thank you, here's an update!

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Chapter 9

(Hank)

I adjusted the flow on Scott's intravenous drip, checked his vitals and sighed. It had been two weeks and he still hadn't come out of the coma. I wished again that the bullet had gotten me instead; I don't heal nearly as efficiently as Logan, but I do heal faster than normal people and I would have probably been all right. I wrote down his numbers before returning to my office. I tossed my glasses on the desk and rubbed my eyes, exhaustion catching up to me, and thought back to the mission in France that brought us to this point...

_The call came in at six in the morning New York time, an attack on an embassy in France. The only reason the X-Men were called at all was because of reports of unknown mutants being involved. Cyclops chose Beast, Sunfire, Totem, Shadowcat, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Polaris to go, figuring it was the perfect mix of projection and physical powers and should be able to handle anything. How wrong he was._

_The jet landed as close to the embassy as it could, the team arriving on the scene as quickly as possible. What they saw was nothing short of pure mayhem and the mutants causing it sent shivers of fear down their spines. At least two units of the French army, along with dozens of police, were involved in heavy fighting with a number of mutants with a variety of powers, but they all had one thing in common. They took bullets, indeed some of them took enough to knock down a rhino. But they didn't stay wounded for long._

_"Mein Gott!" Kurt exclaimed, recognizing the healing ability immediately. They all knew that the artificial healing factor had been used successfully on several mutants, thanks to the files Wolverine and Hellcat had retrieved over the preceding decade, but they hadn't known how exactly how many. There were at least thirty mutants attacking the embassy and each of them healed almost as well as the feral mutants they knew so well. If this was only a fraction of the successfully augmented mutants, the problem was much larger than they could have anticipated._

_Cyclops started barking out orders and the team dispersed accordingly. The only one that didn't listen, that had gone in as soon as he saw what was happening, was Totem. Much of his early training and conditioning had been on how to kill Wolverine, as that had been his original program. The Professor had reversed the actual programming, but the knowledge remained intact. Cyclops tried to pull him back, tried to get him to subdue as opposed to kill, but to no avail. Of them all, only Totem understood that these mutants could not be allowed to survive, that these mutants were firmly in the grasp of Weapon X and there would be no reasoning, no negotiation, no mercy would come from them. He knew he might die himself, knew he might never see his beloved Chasca again, and although he would regret that, he didn't let it stop him. He leapt into the fray in his feral form with a snarling scream that could be heard over the sounds of gunfire, slashing out with his claws._

_With a curse, Cyclops moved in, shooting enemy mutants with beams of coherent red energy from his eyes. It knocked them down, but they seemed to recover much faster than he anticipated. He absently noted fire bursts coming from above; Sunfire bringing his own power to bear in an attempt to create a buffer zone between the attackers and the rest. He saw several crumpled cars moving in between the two sides __of their own accord thanks to Polaris, while Colossus simply tossed others into position. Shadowcat was simply running into the crossfire and grabbing wounded, phasing them out with her and dragging them to safety, where Beast could give them whatever aid he could while fending off the occasional attacker that made it that far. Eventually, the French emergency medical units figured out what he was doing and rushed over to assist, freeing him up to take his place with the team._

_It was shortly after that it all went wrong. Totem was nowhere to be seen, though his snarls could still be heard. Cyclops ordered Colossus to find him, hoping that none of these new mutant weapons had claws like Wolverine. Adamantium was about the only thing that would penetrate his organic steel form, which made him the second most invulnerable person on the team. Shadowcat simply could not be harmed as long as she stayed phased, and since her power disrupted electrical fields - including nervous systems - she had no reason to become solid for more than an eyeblink. Just running through someone was enough to send them into seizures that took a good while to recover from, healing factor or no. Between the two of them, they'd be able to back up Totem nicely._

_It seemed to be working, as the enemy side began focusing their attack on the area where Totem had last been spotted, when fresh gunfire broke out. Cyclops looked around to see where it was coming from, but couldn't see anything from his position. He ran towards the barricade, hoping to find someone who knew where the shooter was, when he took a bullet in his left shoulder, followed by another that took him mere centimeters from his heart. His vision swam and went dark as he fell over, gravely wounded. Nighcrawler saw it as it happened, teleporting over to his team leader and assessing his condition before teleporting him back to the med units. He told them that they could not remove his visor or attempt to open his eyes under any circumstances before 'porting back to Cyclops' former position. He reported Scott's injury over the com, then proceeded to use all the training he'd received from Wolverine to determine where the shooter was._

_He caught a slight movement in a tower atop the embassy, a shadow within the shadow as it were. He narrowed his eyes and teleported up there, appearing before a figure in army fatigues holding a sniper rifle. The man had been taking aim at someone else out in the battle; who, Kurt would never know. He started when the blue mutant appeared before him, his finger reflexively pulling the trigger, but his shot went wide of the intended target. He tried to bring the rifle to bear on Nightcrawler, but Kurt grabbed the barrel and teleported away, taking the gun with him. He reappeared behind the shooter less than a second later, the gun nowhere to be found. Before the man could turn around, Kurt grabbed his head and gave a vicious twist, remembering the one thing Wolverine had said was his own biggest weakness. "Yeah, my bones are covered in metal an' ya can't break 'em no matter how hard ya try. But the joints? The discs in my neck an' spine? They ain't covered an' if you're strong enough an' quick enough, my arms an' legs'll come off just fine. My neck'll snap as good as anyone elses. I'm pretty sure I'll heal a broken neck given enough time, but I don't think I can grow back a whole limb. Maybe it'll reattach if I can get it back soon enough, but I ain't 'bout to try. So if you can get the drop on me somehow, ya better try one o' those things, 'cause nothin' else is gonna keep me down long."_

_At the time, it had seemed unlikely any of the X-Men would need to know any of that for more than the sake of knowing it. But Kurt found himself sending up a prayer of thanks along with his request for forgiveness, because there really was no other way to stop any of these mutants for any amount of time. The man's neck snapped with a sickening crack and he fell to the floor not moving. Still, Nightcrawler didn't trust it to stick, so he grabbed the man and teleported the both of them several stories above the street. He'd positioned himself perfectly over the buffer zone between the two sides and he dropped the mostly dead mutant before teleporting himself back to the ground on the friendly side of the barrier. The man he'd dropped crashed into one of the destroyed vehicles, bouncing off of it and landing again on the ground. Blood oozed from dozens of wounds, but it didn't flow as it would from someone who was alive. Still, Kurt remained poised next to the man, knowing that if he was going to heal, it would happen soon and he'd have to grab him and drop him again. It wasn't until he heard Colossus report that the enemy was retreating that he decided the man wouldn't be getting up and turned away._

_Was the mission a success? It's hard to say. About a third of the enemy had been killed, thanks mostly to the combined efforts of Colossus, Shadowcat and Totem. Nightcrawler had also taken one out, but that left at least twenty who had gotten away. With so many wounded people, Cyclops included, the X-Men chose not to pursue. The embassy was saved, but the question in everyone's mind was the same. Had the attack actually been on the embassy? Or had it been a ploy to bring out the X-Men and test what they knew? Either way, it hadn't gone as well as anyone wanted it to and no one knew if Cyclops would make it._

I was broken out of my reverie by a change in the sound from Scott's monitors. I rushed into the main lab and breathed a sigh of relief. Our fearless leader was stirring, finally coming out of the coma. I sent a mental summons to Charles and busied myself taking down the readings on the machines. The doors opened a moment later and Charles came in followed closely by Sarah. A few seconds later, Scott spoke. "Did anyone get the plate on the truck that hit me?"

We all chuckled with relief, and Sarah went to the other side of his bed and took his hand. I checked his monitors again before speaking. "You are very lucky to be alive Scott," I said, taking down the readings. "A few millimeters for either bullet and only Elixir would have been able to save you, and only if we could have gotten him to you in time."

"Why didn't you call him in for me?" He asked, his voice barely a whisper. "How long have I been out?"

"Two weeks and young Dr. Foley was unavailable for time off." I adjusted his I.V. and again then looked down at him. "He's only got two weeks left in his internship, then he'll be coming back here full time to make me obsolete."

"Now Hank, nothing could make you obsolete," Charles interjected. "Joshua knows not to use his powers for anything but the most dire of circumstances. How else will the children learn to be more careful if they get every bump and bruise healed right away?"

"We'll see," I said under my breath. "Anyway Scott, now that you've awoken, I'm sure the next thing you want is to sleep."

"Yeah, I really do," he replied with a yawn. "You'd think a two week coma would leave me rested, but…" his voice trailed away as he drifted back off, this time into normal sleep. I glanced at Sarah and Charles, then motioned for the latter to come to my office with me. Sarah settled in next to her lover on the bed and I knew it would take a pretty serious disaster to move her any time soon.

I closed the door behind me and turned to my old friend. "Charles, have you had a chance to go over all of our reports?"

"Yes, I have," he replied gravely. "What you've told me worries me. Kurt firmly believes that the whole incident was a ruse to get the X-Men into the open."

"I agree with him completely." I sat down in one of the chairs in front of my desk. "Only a very well-trained sniper could have shot Scott from that distance. And with the rest of the team otherwise occupied, he had a clear shot at Cyclops."

"You don't think that Logan and Angela have betrayed us?"

I shook my head. "No, I don't. I believe they know nothing of this incident and I don't know if they'll ever learn about it now that it's over." I leaned forward and looked Charles in the eye. "I think it's time we prepare for the very worst, that they'll eventually come here again."

The Professor winced, but nodded in agreement. "I will implement the necessary precautions immediately. I only hope we'll never have to use them."

"So do I, Charles. So do I."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Remy)

We saw de report on de news about Cyclops an' little Genevieve was so very frightened. She run up t' her room an' come back wit' another envelope, one she had dated almos' a month before. A few t'ings be a bit different, but mostly it happened just de way she saw. We ask her if he gonna be all righ', but she say she not see dat part just yet, but she went back t' her room so she could look. She come back a few hours later an' say he gonna be all righ', it just take a little time. Remy be very glad about dat.

But what dis Cajun most afraid of is how many like Logan dere were at de embassy. We had no idea dere be so many of dem already an' it make us wonder if we should go home now. But Marie insist dat we not do dat until Logan or Angela say it all right t' do so an' Remy know better dan to argue wit' her when she like dat. She know Logan de best out of all of us, so we have no choice but t' do as she say. But Remy tell you righ' now he don' like dat one bit.

So Genevieve now can see at leas' a month in de future at will. Dis be both a good an' a bad t'ing. Good, because it mean we can ask her t' look ahead an' maybe we can plan tings a bit better in case we need t' make a hasty retreat. But it also be bad, because maybe we not be able t' plan for everyt'ing or change somet'ing what shouldn't happen. We know how it was before, when we all had t' leave our home in de first place. Her _mère_ an' _père _try so very hard t' make it not happen, but dey try in vain an' it happen anyway. Maybe de farther away somet'ing happen, de harder it be t' change it. But we will have t' try.

Storm has finally stopped being sick all de time, but she still not like de smell of certain t'ings. She also starting to show a bit an' she complain all de time dat not'ing fit her righ' no more. Marie is going t' take her shopping wit' Genevieve later, which always make _la petit belle _happy. Remy like t' see her happy; she so sad so much of de time an' it breaks dis Cajun's heart t' see her so. But if she keep up wit' seeing so well, maybe she will finally see us all home an' safe again. It truly be Remy's greatest wish.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

"Aunt Marie?"

"What do you need sugar?"

"Those people, in France? They were all like mom and dad, weren't they?"

"Yeah, I'm afraid they were."

"But mom and dad, they're not bad like those people, are they?"

"No honey, your mom and dad are the best people I've ever met. They only want to keep the world safe."

"But they hurt people too, don't they?"

"Yeah, they do, but only to protect people who can't protect themselves."

"Aunt Marie?"

"Hmm?"

"Mom and dad…they're in a bad place right now, aren't they?"

"What do you mean?"

"They're in the same place those people came from, right?"

"Evie…"

"No, don't tell me I'm too young or that I won't understand! I can see them, all the time, in my dreams. And they're with the bad people, aren't they?"

"Yes, they are sugar. I'm sorry."

"_Why?_ Why are they there?"

"Because sometimes the only way to get the bad people is to pretend to be one of them. They left and went to them because it was the only way to stop them for good."

"They're never coming back, are they?"

"Yes, they are. They promised me but most important, they promised _you_. And your dad, he never breaks his promises and neither does your mom."

"Do they still love me?"

"Evie, they love you so much they threw themselves into the fire to save you. And if they have to claw their way through a mountain, they will come back for you."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Logan)

By the time the sandstorm was over and the extraction team could pick us up, more information on the attack in France had come in. Turns out Cyke was hit by a sniper in the middle of a larger attack and the mutants who were responsible were reported as being "unusually resilient" and they "healed with extreme speed" from injury. This confirmed my original theory, that the Director had done just what we thought he would do, regardless of what he'd told us when we arrived. He was after the X-Men and knew that we would be powerless to stop him.

Going back to that base and pretending like we didn't care about the attack was the third hardest thing I'd had to do in my life. I've already said what the first and second things were, so they don't bear repeating. But shortly after we returned, I encountered the fourth hardest thing and it was a doozy. We had our usual debrief with Colonel Sidowski, followed by a complete medical exam by Dr. Lee (a new requirement for all operatives after his discoveries about adamantium poisoning). We had a bit of free time, so we went to the mess hall for some dinner before meeting with the newest pair of operatives to arrive. As we were leaving the mess hall, we passed one of an endless supply of generic looking soldiers and I did an immediate double take.

"Son of a bitch," I said under my breath, turning to follow the guy with Angela hot on my heels. "It can't be, it just can't be."

"Logan, what's wrong?" Angela asked, her confusion obvious. I ignored her as we rounded a corner, but the soldier was long gone. However, his scent lingered in the air, a scent I would have never expected to catch in this place in a thousand years. I moved to follow him, but Angela grabbed my arm and spun me to face her. "Logan! What is it?"

"That guy we just passed?" She nodded, still confused. "I'd bet a whole box o' Cuban cigars that was Mystique."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

My nose is never wrong. Once I have a scent stored in my memory, it's there forever and I'd been much more up close and personal with that blue bitch than I like to admit. So catching that scent on that soldier meant one of two things. The first is that he'd encountered her somewhere, possibly off base on the rare occasions that the people stationed here went to the nearest town to hit a bar, and her scent was still clinging to him enough for me to detect it. But I was voting for option two, that she'd taken on the guise of a soldier that was probably slowly mummifying somewhere in the blistering desert heat for the sole purpose of infiltrating this place. The sixty-four thousand dollar question is why.

I kept my eyes peeled and my nose open for another whiff of her, but she'd been on the business end of my claws once before and after the last time I'd had to deal with her, she had to know that I was itching to stab her again. So it didn't surprise me in the least that I could find neither hide nor hair of her. Since Angela and I had finally regained our old reputations, we were more or less free to wander the base as long as we didn't try to leave it. There were only two places we didn't have the clearance to go – the so-called "archives" and the research lab. After a week of trying to hunt her down, I figured she had herself disguised as someone who worked in one of those areas, which would make it simple for her to avoid running into me again. She had to eat some time, but I couldn't just set up shop in the canteen and wait. I didn't like the thought of her creeping around this place, but I didn't see what else I could do in the meantime except watch and wait. I can be very patient when I want to be; this was one of those times.

But much as I hate to admit it, catching her in the act of something stupid was pretty low on my list of priorities. Right on schedule, a pair of newly augmented operatives arrived four weeks after the last pair. I was beginning to wonder what would happen when they started running out of code names for everyone. Not everyone could have a cool name like "Wolverine" or "Hellcat". Sure, some of them made sense. We had one guy who could control rock, from boulders the size of Humvees to grains of sand, whose code name was "Rockslide". But his power was limited to a certain amount of mass. Anything over about two tons was, as he put it, "too resistant to change" for him to effect. He wouldn't be leveling mountains any time soon, but he could bring a chunk of it tumbling down on the heads of anyone standing beneath it. On the other end of the spectrum was another guy, a nineteen-year-old kid who could "hear" radio transmissions without equipment and had some limited telepathic ability that allowed him to let others listen in. He had the uninspired code name of "DJ". With two thousand of these people in the works, I just knew it was only a matter of time before someone did come out with the name "Fluffy".

But code names were the least of our worries. The Colonel still liked Angela and I to spend at least two weeks with each new operative before sending them on to others, which only left us available for field ops two weeks out of each month. But in the case of mutants with feral-type mutations, she liked us to stay with them a bit longer, mostly because we understood best how to use the whole feral package better than anyone else. In the seven months since we'd returned, a total of twelve new operatives had arrived. Out of all of them, only two had feral mutations. They both had the enhanced hearing and eyesight along with the healing factor, but only one had the enhanced sense of smell like i have. I wound up spending an entire week with him teaching him how to parse scents from one another, isolate and focus on the one he wanted and how to follow a scent to its source. He passed his tests with flying colors and I sent him on to weapons work, feeling only a little put out because I still couldn't sniff out Mystique no matter how hard I tried.

I had to put that out of my mind, because another op came up that required our particular talents and I don't just mean our skills at assassination or infiltration. The file said that a certain Colonel David Jeffers had copied a couple dozen extremely sensitive files and jumped ship, leaving a letter to the Director that said he planned to turn the files over to the NSA. It wasn't the kind of thing we'd normally take, but the file had a little sticky note stuck to one of the photos, three words written on it in familiar handwriting. Bennington wanted us to take this job, so we did.

It was a bit different from the ops we were used to in that we would be undercover in a casual setting. We'd done similar jobs the first time we were with Weapon X, but although we were the best no matter the setting, our talents were more suited to covert ops and infiltration; undercover was always a pain at best and risky at worst. We prepped for the job for four days before leaving, requisitioning the clothing we would need, appropriate jewelry for Angela and she bleached her hair since she refused to wear a wig. I felt like we were on an episode of "Alias" or something, since our mission was to get Jeffers to pick Angela up at a cocktail bar in Miami and get her back to his yacht, where we were supposed to kill him, retrieve the cd-roms, then set the boat to sail out about a mile before blowing it up (yes, explosions!) to hide the evidence.

When we finally shipped out, it was with a sense of relief. Neither one of us really liked being cooped up in that place any longer than we needed to be and any sense of freedom we enjoyed there was false at best. So although we could have probably finished this thing in twelve hours tops, we opted to take three days, saying that it would be more realistic if Angela developed a rapport with Jeffers for a day or so first, rather than jumping right into going home with him. Of course, we were going to use the opportunity to see the the sights, sit on the beach, watch the sunrise and shit like that. Because we were posing as civilians, we took a commercial jet to the Miami International airport, rented separate cars under our assumed names and checked into the Hyatt in separate rooms that just happened to be connected. As soon as we had ourselves settled in, the connecting door flew open and Angela pounced on me, and we didn't get out of bed again until after the sun had gone down.

The alarm on my watch went off when it was time to put the op in motion and Angela groaned. "Damn it, I don't wanna go. Let's blow it off for tonight and start tomorrow."

I chuckled and ran my fingers through her now blond hair. "We can't darlin'. Ya know as well as I do if we don't get up now, we ain't gettin' up again til it's time to leave."

"Bastard."

"Born an' bred." I kissed her gently, then tore the blankets away from her and she yelped in protest. "C'mon now, go get ready. Put on that slinky red number."

"I'm saving that one for when I go home with him," she said, rolling out of the bed and stretching. "I'm gonna wear the blue sparkly one tonight."

"Mm, that one's nice too." I stood up and crossed to the bathroom, glancing at her over my shoulder. "Scoot! We ain't got much time."

"I say again; bastard." She winked at me and went back to her own room to get ready.

I showered, trimmed my sideburns as much as I could and did my best to tame my hair into something less distinctive. It took me about half an hour of cursing and most of a tube of that crazy "wind tunnel tested" hair gel, but I finally managed. When I was done, I had a hair helmet that would put Cyclops to shame and make Magneto wonder why he ever bothered with the stupid hat he wore. I pulled on a pair of "artfully" torn jeans and a white silk shirt, with a dark gray silk sport coat over it all. Lastly, I clipped a silver hoop "earring" to my left ear. In reality, it was a two-way radio that would allow me to listen in on everything that was said between Angela and Jeffers, and to give her suggestions which she would be able to pick up through the earrings she had to go with each dress. The hoop dug into my skin just enough to appear real without breaking flesh, since it would never do to have my skin heal over the thing.

As soon as I decided it was as good as it was going to get, I crossed to the connecting door and slipped into Angela's room. I could hear her humming in the bathroom, the chemical smells of hairspray and perfume assaulting my nose, with the faint undertone of the bleach she'd used still obvious to me. I shook my head and did my best to ignore the scents, a feat of superhuman will, but I managed it. Ten minutes later, she padded barefoot out of the bathroom and my jaw dropped.

I hadn't seen her in a dress since Storm's wedding, since it wasn't practical for day-to-day use back at the mansion and there was very little call for one in our current situation. The one she was wearing for day one of our little operation was a bit shorter than the one she'd worn in the wedding, in a deep royal blue with extensive beadwork all over it. It had thin straps that left her shoulders bare and I had to resist the urge to kiss her exposed skin. It went very nicely with her fair skin and bleached blond hair, which she had pinned up in a way that set off her beautiful face and slender neck. She smiled and winked at me when she saw me sitting there staring, then slipped on the silver high heels that raised her to a whopping five feet four inches tall. Still, they did wonderful things for her legs and I wished like hell we didn't have to leave the room.

She crossed over and stood in front of me. "Like what you see?"

"Darlin', I don't think I want ya gettin' anywhere near this Jeffer's," I said, pulling her close to me. "He's gonna take one look at ya an' he won't be able to resist."

"That's the point, lover," she replied with a smirk. "I want him so smitten with me that he'd come back every night for a month if that's what it took." I slipped my arms around her waist to pull her close and she giggled. "Not now, Logan! We have work to do."

"Yeah, I know. I'm workin' on gettin' ya back outta that dress."

She threw her head back and laughed, wriggling out of my grasp with practiced ease. "Later, lover. For now, I have a colonel in hiding to trap with my feminine wiles."

I scowled at that, barely containing a growl. "If he lays one finger on you..." I trailed off, no need to finish the statement.

"Logan, you know how this is going to go. Once he's wrapped around my little finger and he gets me to his yacht, I'm going to have to do what's necessary to keep him at ease. He can't suspect for even a moment that I'm not who I say I am."

I lost the battle with the growl. "No, I can't let you do that! Angela, you're my wife damn it!"

"I know! Do you think I would put us through this if there was any other way?" I looked down at the floor, my fists clenched, my claws already itching to gut this guy. She came back over to me and put her hands on my shoulder. "Look at me." I turned my head away and she gave me a shake. "Logan, look at me!" I took a deep breath and turned my eyes back to her. "I love _you_, understood? Mind, body and soul, I am yours for as long as we live. I don't want to do this any more than you want me to do it. But we have a job to do and this is the best way to do it."

"I just...Angela, I think of another man with his hands on you, touchin' you..." I clenched my jaw against another growl. "It ain't good for the Wolverine to think his mate's bein' fucked with."

"I promise, his hands won't get anywhere near anything interesting, okay? I'll have to flirt with him, probably kiss him, but nothing more. I swear, cross my heart and hope to die, for real."

I scowled and shook my head. "I still don't like it, not one bit."

"I know lover. But no matter what happens over the next couple days, I'm still coming back here with you." That, more than anything, helped calm me down. I pulled her back into my arms and she bent down to kiss me deeply. I ran my hands up the backs of her legs and underneath her dress, causing her to shiver a bit before pulling away. "All right you, don't start that now. We still have work to do." She leaned down and kissed me again before pulling away. "Come on, let's go out on the town."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Two hours later, I was sitting at a table in the back of a so-called "private" club, which only meant that every person had to pay a cover charge of five bucks for the privelege of being able to smoke and have a beer at the same time. I had a more or less unhindered view of Angela sitting near the end of the bar, a glass of red wine next to her, a cigarette clenched between her fingers, her shapely legs crossed in front of her. She'd already had to fend off several would-be pickups and I had to resist the urge to spring out of my seat and punch them. But she turned them down smoothly so there was no need to intervene. After all, we were here for a purpose and our early arrival was for recon and last minute planning.

According to our intelligence, Colonel Jeffers usually didn't show up until nearly eleven o'clock on the nights he came to this particular place, though it was our intention to ensure he'd be here every night until we were finished. He was technically undercover himself, since he'd betrayed the Director and all, so we expected his appearance to be different from the photos we'd seen. However, as a career military man, some things were just ingrained and he betrayed some of that by showing up at eleven o' clock sharp. He scanned the room with a practiced eye, his bearing stiff and a touch suspicious. As soon as he decided there was no one here that might recognize him, his shoulders relaxed and he worked his way through the crowd to a table that was most likely his regular seat.

A waitress approached him with a snifter of brandy, proving that he had become a regular here in a very short period of time. For someone on the run, he'd certainly gotten into some dangerous routines - being seen at the same club on the same days of the week, at the same time, a regular table, the staff knowing what he would want before he even sat down. It would have been so fucking easy to just have Angela pose as a waitress, slip some slow acting poison into his brandy and leave it at that. But we had to assume that Bennington had some interest in this guy, since he'd urged us to take this mission over all others, so we had to leave him alive for at least one more day until we knew exactly where that interest lay.

I pulled out a cigar and leaned over to light it. "Target acquired," I whispered, "table seven, drinkin' a brandy."

"Affirmative," she replied quietly, picking up her wineglass and small silver handbag. "Moving in."

I watched her closely as she wound her way through the crowd, taking an indirect route towards his table. She timed everything perfectly, slowing just long enough to allow a somewhat tipsy redhead to intersect with her path just as she came up even with Jeffers. She "stumbled" out of the way, seeming to lose her balance and spilled her wine directly into Jeffers' lap. "Oh my God I am so sorry!" She exclaimed, grabbing a napkin off the table and dabbing at the stain. I took a long drag off my cigar to hide my smirk; spilling a drink in someone's lap is the oldest trick in the book, yet people still fall for it. "Jesus, I am such a klutz!"

To his credit, Jeffers stayed Angela's hand and took the napkin away from her. "No, my dear, it's fine, just fine," he insisted, holding her hand a heartbeat longer than necessary. "Please, sit with me, let me buy you another drink."

"I-I really shouldn't…" she trailed off, looking down and feigning a blush. "God, I'm so embarrassed."

"Don't be, it wasn't your fault." He looked in the direction that the redhead had vanished and shrugged. "It happens." He gestured to one of the empty seats at the table. "Please, just one glass of wine."

She looked up at him, a slight smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "Well, all right. One glass." She settled into the proffered chair and crossed her legs, her right foot grazing his leg slightly. Jeffers motioned to the waitress to bring Angela another drink and the game was officially on.

For the next ninety minutes, they made all kinds of small talk. Angela introduced herself as "Amelia Lewis", thirty-two years old and employed as a legal secretary for a small law firm. Jeffers was using the name "Daniel Jeffries", forty-one years old and working in middle management at a local insurance company. He'd noticed the wedding ring on her finger and asked if she was married, but she gave the cover story that it had been her mother's, who'd passed away four years previous. This seemed to brighten Jeffers' mood and he talked her into another glass of wine.

I watched and listened from the corner, doing a remarkable job of acting like I didn't care about what was going on at table seven. A couple women came up and tried to flirt with me and although I flirted right back, I also made it known that I was supposedly waiting for someone. The women left looking disappointed, but I didn't want to push my end of the ruse any more than I had to. I was watching as "Amelia" laughed at a lame joke that "Daniel" made when a waitress came over with a shot and a beer that I hadn't ordered, a fact that I pointed out to her. She just smiled and said "it's from the lady at the end of the bar." I looked over to see none other than Miss Rebecca Imlay, who raised her wineglass to me, then made a point of showing her napkin. I raised an eyebrow, but picked up the napkin that had been set under my beer. A phone number was scrawled on it with the words "noon tomorrow". I looked back up to acknowledge that I understood, but she was either gone or making me believe she was gone with her powers. Either way, our counter mission was being put into motion. I slipped the napkin into my jacket pocket and cleared my throat to get Angela's attention. "Our friends made contact," I muttered, trying to be discreet. "Time to go."

Since she was still engaged in conversation with Jeffers, she couldn't acknowledge me, but she did bring an end to things by looking at her watch. "Holy crap is that the time?" She said, her eyes wide. "I have a brief I have to finish by tomorrow morning!"

Jeffers smiled, yet still looked disappointed. "Do you have to leave? I'm sure you can stay for one more glass of wine."

"I'm sorry, I really can't," she apologized and sounded very sincere. "I'll tell you what. Why don't you meet me here tomorrow, say ten-thirty? You can buy me another drink then."

"It would be my pleasure, Amelia." He took her hand and kissed it, to which she looked away and faked another blush. She didn't say another word, simply smiled, gave his hand a squeeze and walked towards the door. I followed her two minutes later, making sure to avoid table seven at all costs, and met her in the parking lot next to her rental car.

She was leaning against it with her arms crossed, a small smile on her face. "I see you survived," she said dryly.

"Barely," I replied with a scowl. "An' Jeffers is just lucky that places is too public for an assassination." I pulled out the napkin and showed it to her. "From Rebecca Imlay."

She took it from me and nodded. "Good, I'm glad they made contact. I really don't want to kill this guy if we don't have to."

That took me by surprise. "What? How come?"

"Logan, that man wants to expose Weapon X to the world, let everyone know what's been done to their fellow citizens in the name of so-called science. I don't care how much someone might hate mutants, I can't imagine anyone condoning their tax dollars going into a project as massive as putting adamantium into two thousand people. The cost alone is staggering and the most hardcore FOH member would at least take exception to that."

I nodded, not really wanting to agree with any of it, but I could see her point – once I got past Jeffers flirting with her, that is. "I don't like the way he was lookin' ya over," I grumbled, "like he was undressin' ya with his eyes."

"I know lover, but it has to be done. Now let's get out of here before someone sees us together." She unlocked her car and climbed in, then looked at me with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. "Last one there has to do whatever the other one wants."

The worst part about that? She's a better driver than me and proved it. At least the scars don't stay long.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The next day, I went to meet with Rebecca Imlay. Angela and I had decided it wouldn't be good for us to be seen together, on the off chance that Jeffers or one of his people would see us. Miami's a big place, but Angela had her role to play and I had mine. I didn't want to admit it, but I was very much her backup on this op. Until we knew what Bennington and the BCI wanted with Jeffers, I had to operate under the assumption that, by midnight the following night, he'd be dead and we'd be on our way back to Nevada.

That's what made this meeting with Imlay so important. I happened to agree that this guy didn't deserve to die for blowing the whistle on Weapon X. After all, they'd stolen my life once before and they'd stolen my daughter just a few months prior. They'd stolen two children from my wife and God only knows what they'd stolen from everyone else in their "employ". But for all we knew, Bennington wanted the guy dead too for different reasons.

I called Rebecca at noon sharp, but the only thing she said was "Peacock Park, southmost beach, one hour" before hanging up. I shrugged and finished getting dressed, then knocked softly on the connecting door before shoving it open. Angela was sitting on the edge of the bed buckling a pair of high heeled sandals. "Hey darlin', I gotta get to that meetin'," I said as I sat down next to her.

"Yeah, I kind of figured," she replied, sitting up and nuzzling my neck. "Keep your com on, just in case."

"I will." I turned to her and took her into my arms, kissing her hard. She responded immediately, like always, though it still took my breath away even after all this time and all we'd been through. I had to break apart from her before I got carried away and missed my meeting. "Ok tiger, none o' that now. I really gotta go or I'll miss this chance."

"You owe me," she said, nipping my bottom lip lightly. "I'll be out today around town, see if I can't catch our Mr. Jeffers off guard."

"You do that, but be careful."

"Aren't I always?" She looked at me innocently and I scowled, which just made her giggle. "Don't worry lover. If I see him, I won't approach, okay?"

"Fine." I kissed her again and went back to my room to retrieve my jacket, checking my pockets for all the necessities – cigars, lighter, stuff like that – and left the room. I hated that we couldn't go to the meeting together, hated to leave her out of my sight for more than a few minutes, but she's a grown woman and I couldn't be there to protect her every minute of every day. Hell, she'd probably have my balls on a platter if she knew that I even entertained more than a passing thought that she needed protecting. It's one thing that's an undeniable fact – she'd been at this longer than me.

I made it to the meeting site with ten minutes to spare, so I took the chance to just watch the waves roll in. There's something calming about the ocean that you just can't find anywhere else. The only thing that comes close is the sound of the wind through pine trees and I hadn't heard _that_ sound in what felt like ages. Five minutes later, I caught Imlay's scent as she came up behind me. "Miss Imlay," I said without turning around.

"Mr. Logan," she replied. "You're early."

I shrugged. "Mighta broken a couple land speed records, but I figured I'd scout the place out, make sure this wasn't a trap." I turned to her, my expression blank. "'Cause I'd hate to haveta kill ya if it is."

"Then I suppose it's a good thing that it isn't." She returned my blank stare with one of her own and I realized how much had changed since the last time I'd spoken to her. It hadn't dawned on me before, that I was starting to feel less and less like the man I'd been at the mansion. But so much had been taken from me and from Angela since then, it was surprising we felt anything anymore.

I turned back to the water and reached into my pocket for a cigar. "So, what's the situation?"

"Colonel Jeffers has information that we desperately need at the BCI. You already know that he has classified files that would expose the entirety of the Weapon X project, going back to before your wife was forcibly recruited. What you don't know is that he's already made several copies of all those files and has secured them in safe deposit boxes in Switzerland, the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas. We know for certain that he has left instructions for the immediate dispersal to several news agencies if he does not check in with those places once every three days."

"So it don't matter if we kill 'im or not, the info gets out anyway."

"Precisely. Mr. Bennington would prefer that the Colonel survives, however, so that when the time comes, he'll be able to testify about what he knows. Regardless of what you may believe, the Super Soldier program was never supposed to go as far as it did. Its original intent was to protect the country from outside threats, to preserve democracy and to uphold the Constitution. It was never intended to become the horror show that it is now."

I snorted and turned back to her. "Oh yeah? That's a helluva thing to say to me! Those fucks took my life, shattered my mind an' ultimately led to my daughter's death! If Bennington really knows everythin', then how come he ain't done anythin' to put a stop to it, huh?"

To her credit, she didn't even flinch. "Mr. Logan, as horrible as this sounds, sometimes you have to let certain things happen in order to prevent something worse down the road."

"An' just what might that be?" She crossed her arms and stared, clearly not about to give up the information. "C'mon darlin', ya can't bullshit me. You an' Bennington know somethin' an' if ya want us to help, you're gonna have to do better'n that."

She narrowed her eyes, but I could tell she was debating whether or not to let me in on the secret. Fortunately, she decided well. "As you are aware, mutants have been around a lot longer than people think," she said, uncrossing her arms and relaxing a bit. "Mr. Bennington is probably the oldest one on record, but you run a very close second with your wife just behind you. About forty years ago, the BCI had a precog in their employ." I felt the blood drain from my face; any mention of precogs always made me think of Evie. Rebecca didn't seem to notice and went on. "Now, mutants in general seem to be a bit more resilient than normal humans, but most of us are still just as susceptible to human illnesses as anyone else. The man in question developed a rare form of cancer and died, but a week before his death he had a vision."

"Lemme guess; we're gonna be invaded by aliens and the Super Soldier project was restarted to fight 'em."

"Your sarcasm is hardly becoming, Mr. Logan," she said dryly. "No, what he saw was far worse. Some time within the next ten years, an army of mutants will overrun the country."

"Lady, tell me somethin' I don't know, all right? Dahell you think the Director's makin' all these metal filled soldiers for in the first place?"

"You misunderstand me. The army isn't the one the Director is building. And it isn't led by Magneto or any of his followers."

"Then where's it comin' from?"

"We're not sure, not anymore. Up until the Cold War was over, we would have said the Soviet Union. With the way things are going in other parts of the world, we can speculate that it's coming from the Middle East, North Korea, Central America…the list is pretty long. But the vision was clear on several points – the mutants are very powerful, with different abilities and they were unstoppable."

I couldn't help myself; I started laughing. "Darlin', you are so far off the mark." I leaned in with a smirk. "Do you really think the Director's managed to find two thousand mutants with this healin' factor o' mine? He _engineered_ it an' he's given it to all kinds o' people. That army is _his_ army an' unless you can get him an' the project exposed within the year, it's gonna start cuttin' a swath through this country that'll make Vietnam look like a picnic." I shook my head and lit my cigar. "You better bet that army's unstoppable. I should know, they got me trainin' 'em."

Her eyes widened and she paled, but recovered quickly. "Colonel Jeffers is just the start. We'll get him taken to a safe location and secure the information he has. But we'll need more, much more if we're really going to stop this from happening."

"You can't stop it, not now. You can only hope to survive it."

"Look, are you going to help us or not?" She asked, clearly wanting to get this over with.

I looked out over the water, my thoughts running in circles. Angela and I had no intention of letting that army complete its mission. Our sole reason for living was to kill the Director and disappear into thin air again, to live the rest of our lives away from the shitty world. I didn't see any point to trying to expose the project, since killing the Director should kill the project as well, but if it helped us in any way, I couldn't see any reason not to humor her. I turned back to Rebecca with a sigh. "Whattaya want us to do?"

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Later that night, I watched from the back of the cocktail lounge as Angela laughed, flirted and otherwise made herself irresistible to Jeffers, who fell for it hook, line and sinker. She'd been stunning the night before in the blue beaded dress, which I would have said was impossible to top. But the green silk she had on the second night raised the bar even higher. It killed me to sit back and watch as Jeffers undressed her with his eyes and had his wicked way with her in his mind, but I again resisted the urge to stalk over there and gut him like a fish. I was extremely glad we only had one more night of this, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to stop myself.

As gorgeous as that dress had been on Angela, it didn't survive more than five minutes once we got back to the hotel. I know it's insane, but part of me was trying to reassert my claim on my mate. In a lot of ways, the Wolverine is a completely separate part of me, almost another person. But unlike someone with multiple personalities, I have control over that other part of me for the most part. But there are some things that are nothing more than base animal instinct and the last time the Wolverine felt threatened by another person had been when Totem first came into our lives. We all know how that almost went and since Jeffers was supposed to remain alive and he didn't have a healing factor, the Wolverine took it out on the only other person involved – his mate.

A few hours later, the dress in tatters on the floor, the sheets and blankets in a tangled heap next to it, Angela turned to me with a sparkle in her eyes. "You're jealous," she stated, barely containing her amusement.

"I am not," I grunted, probably the biggest lie I've ever told my woman the whole time I've known her. "Ya just looked so good in that dress, I couldn't contain myself."

"Mm-hmm. Pull the other one." She wrapped her body around mine, nuzzling my throat. "I know you too well, Logan. You're jealous, don't bother trying to lie about it."

I slid my arms around her and traced her spine with my fingertips. "Fine, ya caught me. I just hate seein' ya flirtin' with that guy. You're my wife, dammit an' it pisses me off."

I felt her shoulders shaking – she was laughing? I pulled away and looked down at her. Yep, she was laughing. I scowled and she tried to stop herself. "Lover, it's all an act, remember? He's not going to lay a single finger on me, no matter what, all right?" I kept scowling and she sighed through her giggles. "And you can tell the Wolverine I said that, ok? Not that I'm complaining, this was incredible. But if I don't get some sleep, I'll never be able to fend off his advances once we get to that yacht of his."

I growled, but let my expression relax. "All right, I'll see what I can do. But he don't like this any more'n I do, ya know."

"I know. But after tomorrow, it'll all be over, okay?"

I nodded and she snuggled into my chest, her breathing slowing as she drifted off to sleep. I still didn't like this, but she was right. Only one more day and then we'd be able to put this behind us.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"You have a yacht?" Angela asked Jeffers the next night. He hadn't brought it up until now, but my woman is a master at manipulating a situation to get what she wants. A few well-placed comments about how much she loved sailing and wished she could afford her own boat forced the Colonel to admit that he had one of his own. I scowled through the cloud of smoke from my cigar as she leaned forward, her eyes bright. "Ooh, you have to take me to see it!"

"What, right now?" Jeffers replied, his posture changing from relaxed to tense in a heartbeat, but not a fearful tension. No, this was anticipation and I had to suppress a growl.

Angela nodded and put her hand over his. "Oh yes, absolutely! I love the water. Besides, it's so noisy in here tonight. Wouldn't you rather continue this in private?" She lowered her eyelids, a look that's worked on me every time she's used it and Jeffers was no more immune to it than me.

He took a deep breath and finished his drink. "Sure, why not? Shall I drive or do you want to follow me?"

"I'll have to follow you. I don't want to leave my car here." He nodded and they stood up. "I'll meet you outside. I have to powder my nose." She smiled up at him and started weaving through the crowd towards the back of the lounge. Once she was in the hall where the restrooms were, I followed her.

I couldn't see her, but I could smell her and that confused me for a moment until an arm shot out and dragged me into a small utility closet in between the restrooms. The scent of bleach, lemon scented disinfectant and industrial cleaners almost overwhelmed me, but since it was Angela that pulled me in there, I didn't worry about it. "Dahell you haveta drag me in here? It fuckin' stinks."

"Sorry, but someone went into the ladies ahead of me and I didn't want to be overheard." She pulled me down and kissed me hard. "I know you heard everything, but I want to go over the plan one more time." That's my woman, playing it safe til the last possible moment.

"I'm followin' ya to his boat an' waitin' two minutes before comin' on board. You haveta explain who you are an' why you're there, an' that you're not followin' that plan. By then, I'll have set the charge on the fuel line an' gotten the boat ready to blow."

"Right. You said Imlay will have her people there right behind us to extract him?" I nodded. "Good. Make that call on the way. I hope that with my car between yours and his, he won't think we're being followed."

"Me too." I kissed her again, glad that she'd gotten us this moment alone. Just in case. "Love you tiger."

"I love you too." She cocked her head, then opened the door, straightening the skirt on her red satin dress. I came out after her and a woman just leaving the ladies room looked us both over with a knowing smirk. Angela faked a blush while I winked and walked away.

I hung back in the hallway and let her leave ahead of me, watching her back appreciatively. As soon as she got to the front door, I pushed my way through the crowd and emerged from the building under a minute behind her. I scanned the parking lot for her and spotted her car idling near a dark blue Jaguar. I trotted across the lot to my own car and started it up, then plugged the Palm Pilot I had hidden in the glove compartment into the lighter. I tapped out a quick message to Imlay and whoever she had with her and sent it, then set it to track Angela. Now, even if I lost her, I'd be able to find her no matter where she went, thanks to a small tracking device in the bracelet she was wearing. I looked up just in time to see her leave the lot behind Jeffers' car, so I started my own up and pulled out.

I followed them at a discreet distance for about forty minutes, when they pulled into the driveway of one of those private gated communities. I cursed softly under my breath and drove past the gate. We hadn't expected him to have a private slip, but since it was almost impossible to get into those neighborhoods without being detected, it made sense. But these places weren't prepared for me. No one ever is.

I parked my car a quarter mile down the road and tapped out another message to Imlay, telling her about this new development. I didn't know how they'd handle getting in there, but they'd probably go in under the guise of some law enforcement agency or another. I didn't have that luxury; I had to get in there as fast as I could. I tossed the keys to my car on the seat and locked the door behind me, since I wouldn't need it anymore. I dashed to the wall surrounding the community, twelve feet of stucco-covered concrete with iron spikes at the top, at least two feet thick. I didn't bother trying to go through it, I just popped my claws and climbed to the top, sliced away the spikes and dropped down to the other side in a crouch. I scanned my general area, but so far I heard nothing. I extended my senses as far as I could, looking and listening for motion sensors or perimeter cameras. I finally caught a slight reflection high in a tree about fifteen feet behind me, probably a camera. I slipped to the tree and found the wires that connected to the device and cut them. I didn't know what the timing was on the monitors in whatever passed for a security office in this place, but I figured I had less than five minutes to get to my target and no time to waste taking out every camera and sensor along the way. I needed a new plan and fast.

Fortunately, one presented itself to me a moment later. I spotted a patrol car, probably the private security, driving slowly along the road nearest me. I melted into the shadows of a huge flowering shrub, trying not to sneeze, and watched as they stopped the car. I heard a radio crackle and from what I could hear, the malfunctioning camera had been discovered. Both guards left the car, but they didn't lock the doors – perfect. I waited patiently as they made their way to the tree, then slipped out of my cover. One of them reported the sliced wires, which I wanted them to do, since neither one of them would be in any condition to report anything in a few seconds. They started scanning the area for an intruder, but they had no idea I was coming to them. One of them turned just as I came up, but before he had a chance to do anything, I punched him in the forehead, pulling it enough so that I didn't crush his skull and he went down hard. His partner still had no idea, but I dispatched him just as handily. I dragged them under the bush and dashed to their car.

I checked my watch and cursed; I was already two minutes behind schedule and I had no idea what could be happening in Jeffers' boat. The listening devices in Angela's earrings are strictly short-range, effective to no more than about forty feet, so I wouldn't have any clue what was going on until I was already there anyway. I just hoped that he hadn't tried anything stupid or that Imlay hadn't gotten there ahead of me. I checked the Palm Pilot for Angela's signal and followed it to one of the last houses in the whole place. I ditched the car a block over and ran the rest of the way.

I slowed as I approached the private slip, the sound of soft jazz music clear to me in the stillness of the night. My instincts took over and I stalked up the dock towards the boat. When I got within range, Angela's voice came in clear through my own fake earring. "…calm down, all right? It's not what you think, I swear. Just put that down and don't do anything stupid."

I growled and threw caution to the wind, running the rest of the way to the boat even as Jeffers' voice came across the com. "It's a little too late for that, don't you think?" He said, a note of hysteria creeping into his voice. "But it doesn't matter, don't you see? The secret'll get out even if you kill me. But there's nothing keeping me from taking you out with me."

Time stretched out in that odd way that it does right before something horrible happens, each second feeling like a lifetime. I heard the unmistakable click of a revolver reverberate through the com, drowning out my own heavy footfalls on the dock. Angela grunted and I could hear the shifting of fabric as she moved, but I had no idea if she managed to get out of the way before the gunshot thundered through the night. I leapt onto the deck of the yacht and threw myself across a space that seemed to stretch before me as another shot was fired. I heard my woman gasp and a loud thud echoed from below me as I made it to the steps that led into the stateroom below decks and I hoped he hadn't killed her, for his sake. It doesn't matter to me that she always comes back; if someone kills my woman, all bets are off.

I jumped down the steps and popped my claws as I landed. Jeffers spun on his heel and leveled the gun at me, and I smiled. "Don't do it, bub," I snarled. "You'll only piss me off." I scanned the stateroom in a glance and saw Angela off to one side, her hands clenched around a wound high on her left leg and cursing a blue streak. I turned my gaze back to Jeffers. "Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way, your call."

"There is no other way!" He shouted, waving the gun at me. "I was almost outta here, I only had two more days! I'm not going back and I'm not dying alone!"

"You stupid fuck, if you'd just listened to the lady, you'd know that you ain't the only one who can pull a double-cross here."

"Why should I believe a word you say, huh? I'm not an idiot! I know that when you want someone dead in the bloodiest way possible, you send Wolverine and Hellcat. I can't believe I didn't recognize her."

"It's called bleach, asshole," she spat, pulling herself to her feet. She was still bleeding heavily from her gunshot, but she didn't let it hold her back. "And you can believe us or not, but we're not here to kill you. Well, not anymore. It's a long story and right now, I have to pass out."

We both moved to catch her, but she fell flat on her face before either of us made it. Jeffers was closer and knelt beside her, but I was there in two steps and tossed him aside. I heard the gun clatter somewhere on the floor and a cracking sound that I hoped wasn't something breaking in Jeffers, but I didn't really care that much. I turned Angela over and breathed a sigh of relief; she was still breathing. I lowered her gently to the floor and turned on the Colonel, who was cowering on the sofa. "You have no idea how lucky you are, pal. If you'd killed her…"

"What?" He said with a sneer. "She comes back, right?"

I growled, grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off the couch, popping my claws in front of his face. "I don't give a shit." He made a whimpering sound, his eyes nearly popping out of his skull and he absolutely reeked of fear. I dropped him and he stumbled, landing heavily on the sofa. "How'd ya find out who she was anyway?"

"W-we got back here, I-I got some wine, p-put on the music a-and she just…t-told me," he stammered, struggling to sit. "She said why she was here, but the mission was changed. How could I believe that?" He seemed to regain his nerve and stood up to face me. "I know what she is, what you both are and if you're sent to kill someone, they die, it's that simple."

"Things ain't as simple as they used to be." I slid my claws away and hauled him to his feet. "An' we ain't exactly what we used to be either. Now listen close…"

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I was still explaining everything to Jeffers when Imlay and her people showed up to take him into custody. Happily, he recognized her and she finished briefing him while I went and sabotaged the engine on the yacht, planting a detonator about the size of a quarter on the fuel pump. She spirited him off to a boat they'd brought to get him out of there while I finished up. Angela was still out cold, but her healing factor had already pushed the slug out of her leg and it was hardly bleeding, so I bandaged it with a shirt I found in the sleeping quarters and took her up to her car. Finally, I released the yacht from its moorings and sent it off into the night, the steering locked so it wouldn't veer off course. I waited until it was about half a mile out and blew the thing straight to hell. Not wanting to get caught by the security force, I pulled her car into Jeffers garage to wait them out.

About an hour later, Angela woke up. "Fuck, I hate getting shot," she complained. "Is he alive?"

"Yeah, alive an' already gone." I slid my arm around her shoulders. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine now." She looked around, then turned to back to me looking confused. "Where are we?"

"Jeffers garage, waitin' til the security guys leave. But now that you're up, we can go over the wall."

"Great. Let's get the hell outta here."

* * *

**AN:** Mmm, what's gonna happen now? Well, i guess you'll have to keep reading and find out! Special thanks to my beta team: Zac, Turiel Tincdaniel and DBK(tm)...Extra Special thanks to my readers for staying with me...and Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were TnTornado, Andromeda Jones and the aforementioned immrlucky...:) Mr. Tornado: Hope you had fun on your trip! Thanks for reviewing when you came back...:) Miss Jones: Hope this was soon enough for you...:) immrlucky: Thank YOU for reviewing!

**See everyone? I mean it when i say the update will come as soon as i can get it done after a new review! So don't wait, be the next one to get a shout out and an update pretty much on demand! You could get the rest of this posted in about 12 days as opposed to a month or more!**


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

(Buzz)

When the Prof asked me to completely reprogram the security system and reset every motion sensor, camera and alarm we had, I thought he was nuts. It's not that I can't handle it; I'm Buzzkill and computers are like open books to me. But I couldn't see any reason for it. Sure, it looked like a crapload of those Weapon X mutants did the deed in France, but that didn't mean they were coming here, right?

Well, the Prof thought otherwise, "forewarned is forearmed" and all that shit. So I spent a week scrambling lock codes, changing passwords, doing all the little things that needed to be done to completely change the security system. I just didn't try to think about the real reason, the one he didn't tell me. He was afraid that Angela and Logan would come back at the head of an attack squad. I was afraid to tell anyone I thought he might be right.

Yeah, I've known Angela longer than anyone else here, except technically Logan, but that don't mean I know her very well. Hell, I'd never even known she was a mutant til that day in Crazy Wisdom when she busted outta Detroit. She'd found me the same way all hackers find each other, online. If you know the right addresses, ones you can never find on Google, we're out there. One day, I got this email from hellcat at rnr dot com, asking to meet me. I went to the club, the hottest spot in southern Michigan and she laid it all out for me. She was in hiding from a violent and abusive ex, who just happened to be a state trooper in Minnesota. She'd pay me handsomely to keep her name and pictures out of the papers, off the news, and to create an entirely new identity for her. I asked her why she didn't go through proper channels and she just said "Violent ex. State trooper. Do the math kid." I didn't care; the money she was offering would pay for a good chunk of my college tuition when the time came and what fifteen year old could pass it up?

So that's how we met. Over the next few years, she'd contact me for this job or that, little things that were questionably legal but hell, I'm a hacker, like I gave a shit about that. I had no idea I'd never make it to college, but I really didn't need to once I got the job at Xavier's. I was playing with equipment ten or fifteen years ahead of anything I'd have worked with if I'd done things the "normal" way. And I'd have never met Jubilee, but that's not a story I'm going to share.

Anyway, once I had the entire security system overhauled, I decided to do a little extra-curricular digging of my own. For all that they're some kind of super-secret black ops group, those Weapon X people know sweet fuck all about computer security. Torturing mutants for fun? Sure, they're the best. But they also had a tendency to leave their back doors wide open, or at least cracked enough that someone with enough patience and skill could waltz right in and find out anything they want. And not to sound arrogant or anything, but like Logan, I am the best at what _I_ do, and what I do is extremely sneaky.

It took me a couple weeks, but I finally found what I needed, even if it wasn't what I was looking for. As soon as I was sure I wasn't reading it wrong, I went right to the Prof. He dismissed his class before I even knocked on the door and I went in as soon as all the little kiddies were gone. "I sense you have something on your mind, Buzz," he said without preamble.

"Uh yeah, you could say that." I dropped the file folder I put the printouts in on his desk. "I think there's a problem with Logan and Angela."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Storm)

It felt like it took years before I stopped getting sick all the time. I have no idea how Angela did it, unless her own healing factor kept the morning sickness, irritation and hot flashes at bay. I got so sick of being warm all the time that I cut my hair off. Sam wasn't thrilled, but he doesn't have to live with it all the time. I thought it looked cute, short and a little shaggy, but Evie just made a face and Remy said it would take getting used to. I really couldn't care less, I was comfortable for the first time in weeks.

My clothes were getting tight too, but when I looked in the mirror and saw the little bulge that was my baby, it made me smile in spite of the situation. I missed everyone at the mansion so much and worried about Logan and Angela every day, but this was a tough situation for everyone. Still, thinking about this new life that I would be bringing into the world made me so happy and helped keep things in persepective. Everything that everyone was doing, they were doing to make the world a better place for him - or her - and all mutants everywhere. It couldn't last forever.

Of course, we didn't miss the report about Scott and we were all incredibly worried about him until we got the word from Hank that he was going to be all right, at least physically. I didn't know how he was handling things otherwise, especially because he'd always been firmly with Charles in the belief that mutants and humans could co-exist peacefully. I wanted to believe that, but being a mutant on the streets of Cairo all those years ago, I knew the reality was far different. I wanted a peaceful world, but I was willing to fight for it and do whatever was necessary to bring that about. Maybe it's because Scott actually has no control over his powers. Without the ruby quartz in his suglasses and his visor, the beams his eyes emit would destroy everything in its path. Because of that, he's always been a little bit afraid of himself, though he does a pretty good job of hiding it. He knows how destructive his power is and how easy it would be to hurt people, and he doesn't want that.

But people like me, and Logan and Angela to a greater degree, who have lived out there and had to try and hide what we are, it's not that simple. I was lucky, I got taken in first by a kind man on the streets of Cairo who taught me to be a thief, then later by a tribe in the Serengeti who worshipped me as a goddess, all before I was twenty years old. Charles found me and brought me to the mansion, taught me to use my powers and that there was a better way. I did the best I could then and still do the best I can now, but with everything I've seen, I know the harsh reality.

Logan knows that better than anyone else, having lived out in the world and not even knowing who or what he really was for so long. He and Angela, along with Totem, have endured the worst that people can do to other people and it amazes me to this day that they still care at all. If it had been me, I don't know that I would have ever given anyone else a chance. If Scott ever needed proof that the three of them are the noblest of us all, that one simple fact should tell him beyond anything else. And right now, he needs that persepective if he's going to get through this latest ordeal without falling apart completely. He'd seen some horrible things before this incident, but now the program that gave us Wolverine, Totem and Hellcat in the first place had become very real, much more than before, because the proof of its continued existence had been right there before him.

Poor Scott, getting another dose of reality right between the eyes. I only hoped that Logan and Angela would do what they needed to do and come back before it all blew up in our faces.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_Seven months, one week, three days, nine hours and thirty-one minutes since mom and dad sent me away._

_Aunt 'Roro is over being sick all the time, once and for all. We can even have omelets again, which is really cool 'cause Uncle Remy makes the best omelets ever. I think I've mentioned that before, but they're so good I think mentioning it again is ok._

_Uncle Scott got hurt, but Uncle Blue says he's gonna be ok. But if I know Uncle Scott, he's still really upset about everything that happened. I know they all tried to keep things from me and stuff, but I know that Uncle Scott and dad used to argue about all kinds of stuff all the time, especially after missions. I think Uncle Scott thinks that dad likes to hurt people just because, but that's not true. Maybe it's because I can see things that no one else can see that I understand that, but you'd think that he'd know better than to say something like that to my dad. He's not some crazy person like those people in that Brotherhood, who really do like hurting people and even other mutants. Aunt Rogue and Uncle Atlas are always telling me that I should only use my powers to help people, unless they're trying to hurt me in the first place. But I don't really have a power that can hurt anyone. I can see the future, almost a month ahead now I think, so there's really no way to hurt people with that._

_But I think sometimes it would almost be better if I'd never gotten this power. I don't want it, I'm too young to deal with seeing all these things all the time. I don't like knowing stuff before it happens, even though I keep trying not to. I'm gonna have Aunt 'Roro send a message back home and see if they can find someone to come help me with that part. I know I'm not the only one like me, but I remember what that lady said when we first left and I think I might be the most powerful. But what's the point if I can't control it? What's the point if I see everything and most of it doesn't even make sense? At least the dreams are still like little movies I can watch and see all the stuff that's happening if I want to. That lucy dreaming Uncle Charles taught me works for that. It's the bits and pieces I see while I'm awake that are starting to scare me._

_I promise, if I see anything that makes sense, I'll tell someone right away. But for right now, I'll just keep it to myself._

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Angela)

With the Florida mission behind us, we were once again assigned to the training of the new troops. They had a mish-mash of powers, everything from a less powerful version of Iceman to one of the rare naturally healing ferals like Logan and me. We even had a shapeshifter like Mystique, though he said that having the adamantium on his bones prevented him from changing his height, a drawback the geniuses who came up with this idea hadn't foreseen. At least he was only five foot seven to begin with, so he could still make himself look and sound female and not look like some kind of freaky Amazon.

They were still being trained in teams of two, but the focus of our job had changed from strictly pairs to teaching the pairs to work in units of eight, with the most senior of them acting as squad leaders. By our calculations, Logan and I figured they'd have us training them in even larger groups inside of three months, with the final test seeing how all of them worked together as a small army. I didn't want to wait and see; I wanted to be out of here and back at the mansion long before it came to that. I was confident that the Professor and the X-Men could handle almost anything we could throw at them, but the possibility still remained that the Director could change his mind at any time and have the both of us brainwashed. I wanted him dead before he could make that decision.

A couple weeks after we returned, Logan and I were enjoying a rare moment alone outside, though still within the boundaries of the base. We were just sitting on top of one of the small outbuildings, watching the activity below us and smoking, when we heard someone climbing up the ladder behind us. We both made ready to defend ourselves – you just never know when one of the youngsters is going to get it into their heads to try us – but we continued our people watching until whoever it was approached us.

Naturally, Logan identified him first, by scent. "Grant?" He asked, turning his head. "Dahell you doin' up here?"

"Looking for you two," he replied, crouching down behind us. "I just thought you might want to know that the Director is bringing in another mutant today, from Project Phoenix."

"Phoenix?" I asked. Wasn't she already here? "What, did he make more than one copy of her?"

"No, not that one. The other one, the little kid. X-23, Wolverine's clone."

"What?" Logan asked, barely suppressing a growl. "Why?"

Grant shrugged. "I don't know, but it can't be good. One other thing; she doesn't know she's a clone, much less your clone. She thinks she was bred intentionally from you two and that you allowed them to have her."

My stomach dropped and Logan lost his battle with the growl. "What have they done to her? They been trainin' her?"

"No, she's too young and her mutation hasn't actually manifested yet. She's only what, seven years old now? Eight? I think he's bringing her here to force it early."

"You mean torture her," I said and clenched my fists. "They're gonna torture her until it comes out."

"Probably," Grant agreed. "But they won't start right away. They'll let her settle in a couple days, then start small, sensory dep, that kind of thing. They won't pull out the really bad shit for a while. I hope."

I remembered the last time I'd seen prematurely manifested kids, back at that base we'd taken out in Korea all those years ago and the two kids we'd managed to save, Hea and Jung. I don't know what ever happened to them, the Professor took care of all that, but I knew these people were not above doing their worst to any mutant, regardless of age. To them, we were all little above animals, an evolutionary misstep that they could exploit because there were more of them than us. The fact that they were driven by fear of the unknown has no bearing on this. As long as mutants are the minority, we will always be seen as something to be used and discarded, unless by some miracle we could stop this program once and for all.

"…ain't gonna happen," Logan was saying. I'd missed the exchange in my woolgathering, so I turned my attention back to them. "I don't care what we haveta do, they ain't layin' a finger on that kid."

"I don't see what we can do to stop them, Wolverine. They're planning on keeping her downstairs in the restricted areas, where you two can't go."

"Maybe not. But I know someone who can."

"Who?"

Logan grinned and flicked the butt of his cigar off the side of building. "If I told ya, I'd haveta kill ya. But there's someone here no one planned for an' if I can find her, we'll get it taken care of." He stood up and extended a hand to help me to my feet. "I might haveta ask a lot of ya in the next couple weeks, stuff you'd rather not do, but if all this is goin' where I think it is, we'll need every weapon we can muster."

"Just get a message to me and I'll see what I can do. Leave it with Dr. Lee if you can't get one to me yourself."

"Will do. Thanks for the heads up."

Grant nodded and climbed down the ladder, leaving us alone again. Once he was gone, Logan turned to me. "Well darlin', looks like I'm goin' huntin'."

"For who?"

"Mystique. That blue cunt's gonna do what I want her to do or I'll turn her into the Director myself."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Many people feel that Logan is impulsive and reckless, unable to contain his emotions for more than a few minutes here and there, with no patience to speak of. Nothing could be further from the truth. When he got his memories back, some of the things we discovered were nothing short of amazing, his age being the least of it really. His time spent in Japan, learning the ways of the samurai explained his deep sense of personal honor and the way he actually seems to be able to enter an almost meditative state even while he's fighting. But other things, from other times, they were just as important, like the time he spent in World War I in the trenches, or his tour in the Second World War, where he was, of all things, a sniper. That was a job he repeated in the Korean war and Vietnam, although it wasn't his primary function in either conflict. Based on those things alone, thinking of Logan as impatient was laughable at best. The two weeks he spent hunting down Mystique was proof of how wrong anyone was in thinking he couldn't contain himself when it was necessary.

We never saw when they brought X-23 in, though we did hear some talk among the regular human troops. From what I understand, she was a sullen and angry child, with unpredictable outbursts of almost violent aggression. She was definitely like Logan in that regard, though she didn't seem to have his inner calm in even the tiniest amount. And she hated us with a blinding passion. At the tender age of seven, with no one around to tell her otherwise, she believed her handlers when they told her she was there because we gave her to them. It was going to be difficult at best to get her out without a fuss, but that was where Mystique would come in and why Logan devoted so much free time to finding her.

Which was where his patience came in most handy. She had the uncanniest ability to never be close enough to Logan for him to grab her and he vented about it every night before we went to sleep. As a covert operative, she could have been the best, possibly even better than Logan, but she was fanatically devoted to Magneto and the people at the base simply didn't have what it would take to keep her for long. Whatever she was after in this place could only be related to him and once she had it, she'd be out of here and we'd lose what was probably the only chance we had to get those kids away from these monsters. I didn't like the idea of cutting a deal with her any more than Logan did – as soon as she had a chance to betray us, she'd take it – but our choices were very limited and like it or not, we needed her.

But Logan's hunt got cut short when we were sent back into the field. It was practically a milk run, really, just the two of us being dropped into Tokyo to infiltrate some lab that had apparently gotten their hands on some data relating to the process used to create adamantium. I'd had no idea that it was some kind of huge secret, since it is possible to buy the stuff if you know the right people. However, it seemed that since the Director was the only one remaining of the original team of scientists that came up with the process (making me wonder what he'd done with the rest of them), he wanted to keep it a secret and only let the actual metal out of his hands when the price was right. The only reason I know it can be bought is because the Professor had bought quite a bit of it to re-skin the jets just before we left and I know for a fact he'd not gotten it directly from the source. Maybe there were depths to Charles Xavier that no one had ever plumbed.

At any rate, we went in as a vacationing couple again, it always being the best cover for a pair like us. We were only allotted forty-eight hours to complete our objective, so we didn't have a lot of time to ourselves, but what we had we made the most of. Naturally, we left the actual infiltration for the last bit of business, so we could grab the stuff and go, but of course nothing could ever be that simple.

I entered the facility through a fifth story window, leaving Logan in an alley behind a neighboring building in the car. The facility itself was unlike most of the others on this block, in that it wasn't a tower of mirrored glass all the way to street level. This one actually had a decorative brick façade for the first seven stories, which was perfect for me to use my claws to climb it. I was swathed from head to toe in a dark charcoal gray, except for my feet, which allowed me to blend perfectly with the shadows cast on the building. According to the schematics we had of the place, the window security ended at the third story, which is why I decided to go in through a fifth floor window. I selected a window at random and carefully slid the thin blade of an adamantium knife in the crack near the locking mechanism, slicing through it like it was made of paper, and the window sprang up about six inches. I caught it carefully and eased it open just enough to slide inside.

A quick look around revealed that I had made a good decision. Though probably not belonging to anyone in charge of the place, it did have an impressive computer setup that wouldn't have been found in the office of a random clerical type. It was still on – computers in places like this are rarely turned off to prevent loss of data and have their own dedicated power sources just in case of brownouts – so I sat down and scanned quickly through the files until I found the one I needed. With a couple stolen codes, I sent a false signal to their security center that the cameras and sensors on this level were malfunctioning at the main box in the basement, which would give me a few minutes to finish my mission before anyone discovered there wasn't a problem. As soon as I was certain the signal had been sent, I erased all evidence of my tampering in the computer and slipped out of the office.

I tapped my earpiece, which was not in direct link with Logan, but tapped into their own security frequency. He'd taught me the things I had to listen for to be sure that my little ruse had worked, so I wasn't completely ignorant of what was happening elsewhere in the building. After a few seconds, I heard someone ordering maintenance down to check the relays in the basement and smiled. If everything went well, I'd have fifteen minutes to get up to the eleventh floor and retrieve the files. I padded softly down the hall to the stairwell and opened the door carefully. I peered inside, but didn't hear or see anyone, so I gently closed the door behind me and dashed up the seven flights of stairs to the floor I needed.

I paused at the door, straining my ears for any indication that I wasn't alone on this level, but I couldn't hear anything. I chanced opening the door a bare crack and listened again, but I was still met with silence. I eased into the hallway and made my way quietly to the office at the end. I pulled out a set of lock picks and opened the door with little effort, then slipped inside. For all that we live in an electronic age, the files I needed were actually on hard copy, though I also had to check the mainframe to make sure they hadn't been transferred over. Finding the hard copy was simple enough, as they were actually lying on the desk before me. I took the papers and rolled them up, sliding them into a tube I had stashed in a small backpack, then turned to the computer on the desk. I again used a stolen code that would make it appear as though the owner of this computer, one Jun Asano, was accessing it from home. It took me a bit longer to find what I was looking for, but I finally found where they'd hidden the information and deleted from the computer. Lastly, I searched the office until I found the cd backups that had been made and shoved them into the pack as well. My work complete, I slipped out of the office and back to the stairwell without incident.

As I approached the fifth floor, the chatter on the com changed and Logan broke in. "Hellcat, you've been made. Get the hell outta there."

"On my way Wolverine," I replied as I cursed to myself. I knew I'd taken too long removing the files from the computer, but it had to be done. I paused at the fifth floor door and the sound of security personnel filled the corridor beyond. I bit back another curse and descended another floor, pausing there to listen. I could hear the faint voices above me, but the hallway beyond this door seemed to be silent. I eased into the hallway and tried every door, hoping for an open one. I lucked out at the far end of the hall, but just as I pushed the door open I heard a shout behind me. I whipped my head around just as a man who could only be a police officer leveled a gun at me and squeezed the trigger.

The bullet hit me in my right upper arm and spun me into the office. I bit back a snarl as I turned the lock and dashed over to the window. I pushed it open and climbed over the sash as the door exploded open behind me and with no other options, I dropped four stories to the alley below. I hit the ground and rolled, my adamantium skeleton preventing anything from breaking, but doing nothing to ease the shock of a drop from that height. I took a few precious seconds to recover before standing up and running for where Logan waited in the car, when I was struck with an eerie wave of déjà vu. This was playing out so much like our first real mission together that it was like we'd come full circle. I pushed the thought aside and rounded the corner into the alley where Logan was with the car.

He was standing outside, the driver's door open behind him, when I heard a gunshot and felt the impact high in my right shoulder. I stumbled and fell on the pavement only a few yards from Logan, who rushed over and picked me up. "C'mon, we gotta get outta here," he said as he tossed me into the back of the car.

"Get in and drive!" I shouted as another shot rang out and I saw the spray as it hit him in the leg. His brow furrowed into a scowl and he growled, popping his claws and stalking towards the end of the alley. "Lo...Wolverine, come on!" I know he could hear me, he was just choosing to ignore me. I sat low in the back seat, my hand clenched over the wound in my shoulder and tried to see what was happening out there. That sense of déjà vu continued to plague me as I watched him out there, stalking the men who'd shot us. It didn't happen precisely the same - there were eight men this time instead of only three and my gunshot went all the way through - but otherwise it was pretty much the exact same scenario. By the time he'd taken them out and returned to the car, I was shaking in reaction to the situation.

"You okay?" He asked as he slid behind the wheel. I didn't say anything, I just sat there shaking and he turned to face me. "Angela, are you okay?"

"No, I'm not. Get us the hell out of here, now." He reached out to touch me and I slapped his hand away. "Now!"

He cocked his eyebrow at me, but started the car and peeled out of the alley, while I sat back in the seat and tried to regain my breath. I went over the two missions in my head and I was still floored by how similar they were. The first one had been in Los Angeles, this one in Tokyo. Only three men pursued me then, eight now. In both cases, I had gone in to retrieve some kind of files from someone while Logan stayed outside in the car. Also in both cases, Logan had taken out the last of the opposition while I lay in the back of the car bleeding from gunshot wounds. Thinking forward, I realized that our extractions points were similar, as well as the mode of transportation we would take away from it. The similarities outweighed the differences and although it was probably nothing more than coincidence, it still shook me something fierce.

Somewhere along the way, I fell asleep. When I woke up again, we were already on the chopper back to the military airfield where we would board the plane that would take us back to the States. I handed over my pack with the files and went back to sleep again, wondering as I drifted off again how things had changed, yet were still exactly the same.

When we got back to base, I told Logan why I'd been so freaked out. It hadn't really dawned on him at the time, but in retrospect he understood why I reacted the way I did. We didn't bother speculating, though, because it really was nothing more than mere coincidence. A few days later, we resumed our duties training the newer operatives and Logan resumed his hunt for Mystique.

That was the tricky part of all this, really. We saw her in her guise as a random soldier every now and then, but she was never in a place where we could confront her privately. She always managed to avoid us, other people always saying she'd just left or they just saw her a few minutes before. Of course, they all thought she was a man, a faceless grunt going by the uninspired name of "Andrew Smith", but he had to jave been someone real, though what had become of the actual Andrew Smith was anyone's guess. Probably buried in the desert somewhere, his bones bleaching under the unforgiving sun, while she wore his face and lived his life until she didn't need it anymore. She'd done it before, with Henry Gyrich and again with Senator Kelly, and she would do so again, over and over, anything to achieve her ultimate goal, whatever it might be. For the moment, we didn't know what that could be, but it was going to take a back seat to helping us out. Of course, at the time that we made our plans, we had no idea what was going to be asked of us in return.

* * *

**AN: **Mmmm what am i planning now? Well, you'll just have to wait, won't you? BWAHAHAHAHA (that's my evil laugh, just so's ya know)..Special thanks to my beta team, but especially Turiel Tincdaniel who more or less heads that bunch up and keeps 'em in line...:) Extra Special thanks to all of my readers...it takes a lot of stamina to keep a story this huge going, but just as much to read it, i know! And last, but not least, Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were TnTornado, Andromeda Jones, taigh01 and theNightEnchantress...:) Mr. Tornado: Oh, i'm sure there would have been a spectactular ass kicking, followed by a very graphic and detailed description of the gutting, had Imlay not told him to leave the guy alive...:) Miss Jones: Calm down, honey! Here it is:) taigh01: OMG you're making me blush! Your compliment tickled me about 37 shades of pink and has kept me walking on clouds since i saw it in my mailbox! And oddly enough, i would have updated this story about 6 hours ago, except i'd just gotten home from the club and friends don't let friends update drunk...hehehehehehehe...at least i've kept the hangover at bay! (Oh, and i hope notmanos DOES do the spork scene...i'm still bringing the popcorn!)

**Now, this could have been out DAYS ago if only one new person had reviewed...so come on, if you want more and you want it NOW, all you have to do is hit the "go" button down there and say hello or something, and the update will happen as soon as i get the review!**


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

(Professor X)

Scott's physical recovery went as well as could be expected, but his mental and, dare I say spiritual, recovery wasn't nearly as speedy. Perhaps it was seeing so much physical proof that what Logan, and later Angela, had been warning him of right before his eyes was a wakeup call he wasn't prepared for. Not for the first time, I worried that I had done my students a disservice by always pushing for a peaceful, non-violent way to bring about acceptance for us from normal humans. I worried that perhaps by telling them that their powers were no different than any other extraordinary ability was too much of an understatement. And I worried that perhaps by doing those things, my children were going into the world unprepared for the reality of things out there.

I've had these worries before, through the years, but I think witnessing Scott's reaction to being shot, to seeing all those augmented mutants in one place is what brought them all back in full force. The world has become much better for us in many ways, thanks in no small part to the efforts the X-Men have put forth over the years, but we can not take all the credit. We could have done every good deed, large and small, and it still would not have been enough to bring about mutant acceptance. That was something that needed to be given freely by the people of the world and it was through their testimony that acceptance began. But this army of augmented mutants that were coming out of the same program that gave us Logan, Angela and Kyrohyou seemed poised to destroy what little acceptance we had gained.

I think this is what had shaken Scott so badly, even more so than getting shot. He understood long ago that he would be putting himself in harm's way to protect those who were not strong enough to protect themselves. I thought he'd also understood that sometimes, people under his command were going to get hurt. He took every injury, every death very hard, but I think he felt he was somehow beyond all that, since his power would most likely keep him from the front lines. But the placement of the shots and the position of the shooter brought home something new for all of us; sometimes, we would be specifically targeted for no other reason than the fact that we are X-Men.

It wasn't uncommon to see him sitting in the garden near the memorials for hours on end. I don't think he was there to visit Jean so much as he was visiting a part of his life where he still had some of his innocence left, before the people he cared about started getting hurt and dying for our cause. Losing Jean had been a terrible shock to all of us, but to Scott it had represented so much more. Not only had he lost the woman he loved, the woman he had wanted to marry, but he also lost the first of what would eventually be many members of the team. Some of them were grown, others almost painfully young, all of them taken before their time. Losing Jean was the beginning for him, the incident in France was the end.

He came to me one morning as I prepared for my first class of the day. I don't make it a habit of arbitrarily reading the minds of my students, but his thoughts were so loud and so troubled I couldn't help it. "Scott, you must reconsider what you're thinking," I said as he sat down.

He chuckled bitterly. "Projecting that badly, huh? Charles, I can't help it. I can't do this anymore. I close my eyes and I see all those people getting hurt, getting killed and there was nothing I could do to stop it."

"Scott, you can't blame yourself for the choices of other people."

"I'm not just talking about the people we've lost. Those police officers, the soldiers in France never stood a chance and it was like we weren't even there."

"Those men and women were doing their duty, the same as you. They knew that when they are called to the scene of something like that, they may be asked to lay down their lives to protect others."

He shook his head and looked down at the floor. "I know, Charles. That's why I want to resign as the team leader. I'm not cut out for that. I could never ask anyone to do something like that, to die for people who probably don't give a shit about them. Let Totem take the lead or call Storm back and let her do it."

"Will you be leaving the team?" I asked quietly.

"I don't know." He looked up and even with his eyes covered, as always, the pain was evident on his face. "I just…I don't know."

"We need you Scott, not just as a teacher but on the team as well. Take some time, think about it. I'll ask Totem to take your place for a while, but please keep in mind that you are a valuable asset. Think of the lives you've saved over the years before you make any final decisions."

He nodded and walked out of my office as the first of my morning students filed in. I pushed the conversation to the back of my mind for the time being. After what Buzz had shown me, we were going to need him, but it wasn't fair to use that information in an attempt to keep him where he did not wish to be. He would find out soon enough; I only hoped he would forgive me for not telling him sooner.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Rogue)

Evie asked us to find someone to teach her about her powers, how to use them, how to block them when needed. It took some doing, but the Professor got a hold of that same woman, Erin McKenzie, who helped us out way back when we first left the mansion. She didn't want to meet us directly at our safe house, out of fear that she may have been followed. In fact, she didn't even contact us until she'd been in town for almost a week, just to be certain. As soon as she decided it was safe, she sent us a message, again through the Professor. Logan may have to give up the crown as the most paranoid person on the planet.

The first thing she did was sit us all down and explain that not all precogs work the same way. In her case, she could only see more than about ten minutes into the future while meditating or dreaming. But when it came to immediate danger, her powers worked just the same as they did that day we met her, when she warned us about the police on the way. Then, as she put it, her power just took her over and she couldn't control it until the vision was over. Evie, on the other hand, had been learning such fine control that she could see things just over a month before they happened. But she'd also discovered that the further away things got, the more likely it would be they could be changed.

Now, that only applies to her waking visions. Her dreams on the other hand seemed to be more or less set in stone. There may be slight variances – different clothing, different weather, Sam instead of Remy being there – but for the most part, they happened just the way she dreamed them. Erin explained that dreams were the one constant for precogs, almost as though dreaming something makes it real. She said it's because the subconscious mind is more attuned to the subtleties of the world than the conscious mind, that it sees things most people simply discard from moment to moment and recognizes their importance. Once it gets enough pieces to form a whole, it gives the information to the precog in a dream so that it can't be ignored. It sounded oversimplified to me, but it made sense to Evie and that's all I care about.

So now the two of them can be found sitting in the backyard, meditating under the cherry trees while Erin tries to show her how to control it. She has some telepathy, strictly short range and "low volume", whatever she means by that, but it's enough for her to "walk" with Evie through her waking visions. It's also allowed her to strengthen the shields the Professor taught Evie back when her powers first manifested, although she did warn that very strong visions can't be held back by anything. It was odd, watching the two of them sit out there and think at each other for hours on end, but after the first week Evie seemed much calmer. After the second week, Erin told me and Storm that she was going to be very powerful. Probably not Omega level, since that would imply she'd be able to see to the end of time if she wanted to, but she did imply that Evie's effective range would far exceed any other precog she personally knew of. And the most powerful one she knows to date could see over three years into the future at will.

It seems to me a terrible power to have, to see things before they happen. How tempting would it be to try and be there to change everything? I was under the impression that some things are just meant to be. That by not saving the boy that was hit by a car in a vision, a serial killer will never grow up to begin his reign of terror. But how would someone decide what to change and what to leave alone? We're only human and there aren't enough X-Men to change everything. Erin explained that the really powerful precogs could see not just the event, but the possibilities following the event. That they can see what that boy would grow up to be and could choose to do nothing. But isn't it our responsibility to not only save the boy from the car, but to save him from his own madness as well? I've given myself headaches thinking about it.

But it was Evie who explained it to me the best. She said, "It's not that we don't want to save everyone, we just can't. So if I had to decide between saving one boy or saving a hundred kids in a fire, I'd save a hundred kids because there's more of them. Even if I knew that the boy was supposed to grow up someday and be my husband, because I can't do things just for myself. I have to do what's right for everyone." Logan and Angela sure created one wise little girl.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_Eight months, four days, two hours and nine minutes since mom and dad sent me away._

_Erin is REALLY cool! She's been helping me with my powers and since she has the same one, she can make a lot of things make sense that Uncle Charles had trouble with before. She also told me that it's called LUCID dreaming, which means I can be in control even while the dream goes on around me, or that I can dream about whatever I want to dream about when I go to sleep. She also taught me how to meditate, which is keeping my mind and body quiet so I can make the visions come if I want to. That part's not so easy. I'm just a little kid, I can't help it if my head keeps thinking even when I don't want it to. But I'm getting better at it and I hope that by the time I see mom and dad again, I'll be even better at it than dad is. And he's REALLY good. He can sit there for HOURS and not even hardly breathe. It's kind of scary sometimes, 'cause it looks like he's dead or something, but since I'm pretty sure he can't die, I never worried about it for very long._

_Erin is a telepath too, like Uncle Charles. She's not as strong as he is; if he's like a bright spotlight shining in your eyes, she's more like a flashlight. One that needs batteries. Soon. But if she holds my hand, she gets brighter and it's easier for her to walk with me through my awake visions. She said that I'll be able to control the awake visions on my own soon and that she thinks I'll be able to see farther away than anyone else she knows. I asked her about what she said that one time when we were on our way here to this house, about how I was gonna be important someday. She told me that she dreamed about me once, a long time ago, and that I was helping a bunch of people with the X-Men. She said she knew I was that same person when she saw me, even though I was a lot older in her dream. She said there was a lot of people fighting, that some more bad men were trying to hurt a bunch of people in a city in the desert, but she heard me say something to one of the other X-Men about watching out for the missiles and that the Sentinels would be coming soon. She said she knew we were there ahead of time to stop as many people getting hurt as possible, and that she knew I was the one who saw it._

_I also asked her where she was in that battle and she said she wasn't actually there, she just dreamed about it and me. I asked her if she knew how it ended and she said she didn't see that part. But I think she might have been lying about that, because she seemed kind of sad talking about it. I wanted to ask her more, but she said that we had to get back to work and I didn't get another chance to talk to her about it._

_Diary, I wish that I could see what it was she saw, but I don't know enough about it to try and part of me thinks it would be a bad idea anyway. Because if there's one thing I have learned, it's that knowing that something is going to happen and then not being able to change it is a terrible thing. Maybe everyone is right, maybe some things are just meant to be and nothing I can do can make them happen different. I just hope that when stuff like that does happen that I'm ready to do whatever it is I'm supposed to do._

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Logan)

It took me three weeks after we got back from Tokyo. Three weeks of watching, waiting and planning, three weeks of patiently waiting to make my move. In the end, I had to have Grant give me a hand with it, but he's been undercover in this place a lot longer than I have and he had resources at his disposal that I still didn't have the clearance to get to. But since he was on the base security team, he had access to all areas at all times; if he didn't, he wouldn't be able to get to where he needed to be when he was called upon. Fortunately, "Andrew Smith" was assigned as a status tech in one of the research labs in the levels below the base and rarely left except for meals and the occasional trip into town. Grant figured it'd be easy enough to grab him the next time he went out, though he didn't understand why I wanted to talk to him so bad. He found out soon enough.

But before I got that far, there were new operatives to train, in pairs and larger groups. They were showing up faster now, a new pair every two weeks or so, and it worried me. It meant the Director was stepping up the program for some reason and that couldn't be a good thing. But Angela and I did our jobs, trained the operatives and talked about our fears at night when we were alone. We didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle - for all that we were the highest ranking operatives here, we still weren't told everything - and until we had them, it made planning anything that much harder. But the pieces we did have didn't add up to each other, either.

"...and at the rate that they're coming in, this place will be full by Christmas," Angela called from the bathroom one night. "I wish we knew where the rest of them were, so we could at least warn Bennington."

"Preachin' to the choir here, darlin'," I replied, stretching out on the bed. "There ain't nothin' we can do til we get done here an' you know that."

"I know," she said with a sigh. She came out of the bathroom toweling her hair, then tossed the towel aside. She'd colored her hair back to its normal chocolate brown, though she was still wishing she could put the streaks she used to love back in. But Colonel Sidowski wouldn't have it and she grumbled about it every day. "But it worries the hell out of me. What's he planning anyway? He can't be creating two thousand of us just to take on the X-Men. They're tough but not _that_ tough."

"I wish had some answers for ya, but I don't," I said as she curled up next to me. "I'm bettin' even Sidowski doesn't know what the ultimate plan is."

"We need more information, but I don't know how to get it without raising too much suspicion."

"We'll come up with somethin'. We always do."

A week later, after a particularly grueling training session, the Colonel called us into her office. We hadn't really seen much of her since the incident with Shatter, outside of regular debriefings, so we were more than a little wary that she wanted to meet with us now. But we went to her office as soon as we received the order, then stood there waiting for her to finish looking over a file before asking us to sit. She closed the file and folded her hands on top of it before she began. "I've just finished reading a report from Dr. Lee that says our new operatives aren't going to last and that of all those with natural healing factors, which only number about two hundred of the total, only a quarter of them are equal to the two of you in resilience."

"Yes, that's true sir," I said cautiously, "but I don't see what we can do 'bout that."

"He says that it has something to do with specialized cells in your blood that are fighting the adamantium poisoning. What I don't understand is how come these cells didn't transfer over when the serum was developed from your blood, Wolverine."

"Ya got me. I ain't a scientist, I'm just the muscle 'round here."

"Well, as of now, you are assigned to Dr. Lee for the next two weeks. You will report to the research lab at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow morning." She leveled her gaze on Angela. "You'll have to do without your...husband...for training the troops in the meantime."

"Yes sir," she said with a sigh.

"Very good. Dismissed." She grabbed another file off the stack and opened it up while we showed ourselves out.

I couldn't believe my fortune. I knew that "Andrew Smith" was assigned to those restricted areas and I had just been handed clearance to them on a silver platter. I started to hope that maybe, just maybe, I could pull this off. I said as much to Angela later that night and she agreed.

"But the real question, lover, is how do you get her to agree to help you?" She asked.

"I'm gonna haveta cut a deal with her," I replied, taking a drag off my cigar. "I got a feelin' she's here to find out more about Magneto an' I'm positive we can get that info from Grant."

"Logan, you can _not_ tell her where he is!"

"I don't see where I've got a choice, darlin'. 'Sides, if the Director's really gonna use this army o' his on the rest o' the world, then Magneto's 'bout the best weapon we can muster to use against 'em." She scowled at me and I took her hand. "I don't like it, I really don't. That asshole's got plenty to answer for, startin' with what he did to Rogue an' the Professor. But we gotta be sensible 'bout this. That girl, Polaris, she ain't got what it takes to handle two thousand people with metal skeletons on her own. But with Lensherr there to help, they might have just enough power between 'em to bring 'em to a screechin' halt."

"And then what? We just turn around and kill all these people we've been training? Some of them are hardly old enough to shave, much less be used this way."

"I know, believe me I do. All we can do is hope that we can find someone to help Chuck reverse whatever telepathic conditioning's been done to 'em so we won't haveta kill 'em. But we ain't gonna be able to do that if we don't get someone close enough to the Director to either bring him to us or kill him for us."

"Uh-uh, no way. I'm not letting anyone get the satisfaction of killing him before I get the chance. I _owe_ him for what he did to my Emma." Her face was stony, an expression I recognized as her "I will get my way on this" face. "And _we_ owe him for what happened to Evie."

I swallowed hard and nodded, a lump forming in my throat as it always did whenever Evie was brought up. God, I missed her so much, my beautiful little girl. "I know, darlin'. An' if there's any way to make it happen, I'll do it. But I'm prepared to let someone else do it if there's no other way." She scowled again and I smirked at her. "Besides, if it does come to that, we can always have Grant on hand to 'discover' Mystique in the act an' we'll have two problems taken care of at once."

She sighed and leaned into me. "There you go again, making sense. What have I said about that?"

I chuckled and kissed the top of her head. "That it ain't fair an' kinda scary. But I keep tellin' ya, I do that from time to time."

"Yeah well, stop it."

"Whatever you say, darlin'." She wrapped her arms around me and kissed me, then slid her hands up inside my shirt. I dropped my cigar in the ashtray and walked her over to the bed, still kissing her and we fell onto it and didn't worry about the Director, Mystique or anything else for the rest of the night.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I got up a bit early so I could catch Grant at breakfast before reporting to the lab. I slipped him a note as I passed him in the mess line, letting him know that I had an idea but I would need his help later in the day. From that point forward, I knew there was no turning back; the path was set and we had to follow it to the end, no matter what that end would be. I was surprised at the sense of calm that came over me with that thought. It no longer really mattered to me what happened to me personally and I know Angela felt much the same way. We now had our own players on the board and the rules to the game had changed, even if the other players had no idea.

I made it to the research lab with ten minutes to spare. Doctor Lee was already there, preparing God only knows what for me. He turned as I entered and smiled. "Good morning, Mr. Logan. Did you sleep well?"

"Cut the crap, Lee," I snapped. "What's this really about?"

He sighed and motioned for me to sit down. "The Colonel seems to think that the original team who developed the artificial healing factor were somehow remiss in their failure to also isolate the specialized cells you have that counter the adamantium poisoning."

"So what, she wants to see if you can do better?"

"Precisely. I've already tried to explain to her that the original team took years to produce the serum that's already in use and that I simply do not have the time to develop a new one in the time allotted."

I raised an eyebrow. "When do they want it?"

"Before the new year." I let out a long breath and leaned back in my chair. Dr. Lee sat down on the edge of the desk beside me and picked up a thick file. "Now, this is all the research from the old team and I assure you, they were quite thorough. However, I do believe I know what they did wrong."

"What's that?"

"Rather than trying to work with your blood in whole, they developed the serum using your X gene alone. Now, I could probably come up with a stopgap in the time they want by cloning those blood cells, but there's another problem that they refuse to take into consideration." He paged through the file and pulled out a several sheets. "These are the results of a battery of tests they performed on you just a few days prior to your escape from Alkali Lake. As you can see, they introduced every type of toxin, sedative and stimulant they had at their disposal to your system and your healing factor adapted to all of them." I scanned the first sheet and nodded. "Now, if you'll turn the page, you'll see they weren't satisfied with stopping there and started injecting you with everything they could get their hands on - ammonia, bleach, things of that nature. Your healing factor dealt with those as well."

"I know all o' this, doc, or did ya forget that I was there?"

"No, not at all. But it was that aspect of your healing factor they were the most interested in. Unfortunately for them, as they completed your augmentation, you went berserk – probably because of the pain – and killed many of that original team before they could complete their analysis. They didn't know that your mutation would create specialized blood cells to deal with the adamantium poisoning."

"So how does this affect what they want from you?"

"That team did create an amazing thing, really. The true shame is its dependence on the X gene to be viable. What the Colonel doesn't want to hear is that even if I were to clone your specialized cells by the billions, they won't work in the subjects that have been given the artificial healing factor. It works too well and it would interpret those cells as a foreign body." He leaned forward and smiled. "Mr. Logan, it will kill those cells as soon as they're introduced. Not to put too fine a point on it, most of the two thousand new operatives are fucked."

I nodded in understanding and handed the papers back to him. "But she expects you to make every effort to try. An' we don't haveta tell her that you're gettin' nowhere with it til it's too late."

"Exactly." He put the papers back in the file and put it away. "However, Corporal Grant tells me you have other things to discuss with me regarding putting an end to this whole project once and for all."

"Yeah, I do. You blockin' the listenin' devices?"

"Always."

"Good." I leaned forward and lowered my voice. "We need somethin' that'll put out Phoenix an' X-23 for a good long time. An' you need to be ready to go at any moment. If you could arrange to have Hellcat's daughter's body taken outta here, that'd be great too. But what it boils to is simple; we're gettin' the hell outta here as soon as we can an' burnin' this place to the ground."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A few days later, I met with Grant outside in one of the more isolated parts of the base. I explained what I was going to need from him and, more importantly, from Bennington. I was still assigned to Dr. Lee, who made a great show of taking blood samples from me and supposedly injecting me with all manner of things. In reality, I was being injected with nothing more than distilled water, sometimes with other things in it to give it color, but otherwise we were doing nothing in terms of developing a new serum for the program. What I needed from Grant was to get "Andrew Smith" alone for a nice long chat. What I needed from Bennington was what I suspected Mystique really wanted – the location of Magneto's new prison and the means to bust him out of it. Grant didn't like it any more than I did, but he also agreed that compared to what the Director was doing, Magneto would be the very least of Bennington's worries. But if there was anyone on the face of the planet that could deal with that asshole once and for all, it was Bennington.

Four days after that meeting, Grant sent word that I was needed on one of the obstacle courses that we used to train the operatives. Dr. Lee excused me from the lab for the rest of the day and I made my way out there, hoping that Grant had managed to get "Andrew Smith" out there alone. As I approached, I saw Grant and "Smith" standing on one of the observation decks, their backs to me. I slipped into the shadows underneath the deck and waited for them to climb down the stairs to the ground before making my move. I grabbed "Smith" just as he set foot on soil and slammed him into one of the supports, popping my claws inches in front of his face. He tried to take a swing at me, but Grant was there in a flash, holding his gun next to his head. I smiled coldly. "Hello Mystique," I said. "Fancy meetin' you here."

"Smith" smiled and morphed into the familiar blue bitch. "Wolverine. You here to get your ass kicked again?"

I snorted and moved in close. "Not hardly. What the fuck are you doin' here?"

"Hard as it may be for you to believe, we're on the same side, you and I." She stared at me without fear, daring me to do what I threatened and I looked over to Grant, who just shrugged.

"I ain't on any side that includes you," I said. "Now I'm gonna give you ten seconds to tell me why you're here or I'm gonna gut you for real this time an' leave ya for the vultures. Ten…nine…eight…"

"Oh, come on Wolverine. I know you better than this. You wouldn't kill me without knowing everything. The suspense would kill you."

"I'm a changed man. Seven…six…five…"

"Just cut the shit, Wolverine. I was hoping to catch you alone anyway."

Now _that_ was something I didn't expect to hear. "What the hell for?"

"I need to know where Erik is."

I snorted. "Even if I knew, there's no fuckin' way I'd tell you. You'd just spring him again."

"Exactly." I just stared at her. Unbelievable! Of all the people she could have asked for help and she tracks me down. I couldn't help but laugh. "What's so funny?"

"You are, ya stupid bitch! What ever made ya think I'd help ya with somethin' like that?"

"Because I've been given information from a source that you trust, information that he'll be needed to help stop something coming out of this program." She paused, but I just glared at her. She sneered at me and went on. "The army, Wolverine. He's the only one that'll be able to hold them all. You know it, I know it and the person who gave me this information knows it."

"An' who might that be, darlin'?"

"Charles Xavier."

As other shoes go, it wasn't the one I expected her to drop.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It took a couple hours to get the whole story out of her, but it went something like this. Xavier had sat down with all of the X-Men and told them everything that we knew about Weapon X, the artificial healing factor, all of it. The best case scenario that he'd come up with still left too many variables open for comfort, not the least of which being the fact that he simply didn't have the right people with the right powers to neutralize an army the size of the one the Director was building. With that in mind, he knew only Magneto would be effective, something Angela and I knew, but we were also hoping to destroy the program before it could get that far. But the Professor is nothing if not pragmatic and knew that it would take some extremely dire circumstances for the authorities to release Magneto willingly. His only hope was to get him out another way and so he tirelessly pursued Mystique until he found her.

Once he'd done that, he sent Totem, Cyclops, Kitty and Iceman to "invite" her to the mansion. He laid it all out for her, leaving out the part where Angela and I had rejoined the program on our own agenda. She agreed to help in return for the Professor's guarantee that the X-Men would not stand in their way. He agreed with the provision that they not take advantage of the truce to lay waste to the world or otherwise damage all the advances that had been made regarding mutant rights in the past few years. Once they did something to set things back, all bets were off. She grudgingly agreed and he sent her on her way.

That had been several weeks before she showed up here. In the time between, she'd done a bit of research of her own and determined that at some point after the DC Metro incident and his recapture, he'd been moved from the original facility that had previously held him to a new secured facility. The location of the new prison was known to only a very few people and even Mystique was hard pressed to find someone to imitate to figure out who those people were. A bit of hacking on her part got Area 51 and the Director to float to the top of the pile and she headed here to see what she could discover.

Once she got here, she was initially shocked to see me along with Angela. Because of that, she'd hacked into the mainframe at Area 51 and had "Andrew Smith" assigned permanently to the research labs and archives, because I previously didn't have the clearance to get down there without escort. She'd had no idea at the time that I was there on purpose. Her initial assumption was that Angela and I had finally run afoul of a squad we couldn't handle and had been genuinely recaptured. She'd had some of Stryker's files from his office and knew the kinds of things those people did to their operatives, especially those that misbehaved. And since the two of us had misbehaved in the most spectacular way possible, she was certain we'd been worked over so hard that it was a miracle we could speak, much less function around normal people without arbitrarily killing them. She'd finally contacted Xavier for an explanation and, against his better judgment, he told her why we were there. That had been two days ago and now we were here.

I let out a long breath and ran my fingers through my hair. "So what do ya expect us to do?"

"That's simple," she replied, her gaze unwavering. "I need to know where Erik is being kept, codes to get in and a cover identity. I need a safe place to take him until I can make contact with Xavier. And I need your assurance that when the time comes, you won't get in the way."

"An' just why would I do that?"

"Because you don't want this to happen any more than I do. And I can give you the one thing you want more than anything."

She couldn't do that, there was _no way_ she could do that. More than anything, I wanted my little girl in my arms. I wanted to hear her laugh and breathe her scent. I wanted to watch her grow up, graduate, get married, have her own children. I wanted Evie and no one would ever be able to give her back to me. "No, you can't. No one can."

"So you're saying you don't want the pleasure of killing the Director for yourself?"

She had me there. "Yes, I do, but not more'n anythin'. An' don't ask, 'cause I ain't gonna tell _you_ of all people what that is." She smiled at me, but there was no emotion behind it and I glared at her. "Fine, so you can draw that bastard out o' his office on high for me, that's great. But we'll need more'n that from you in return."

"You're hardly in a position to bargain, Wolverine."

"Neither are you. So what's it gonna be?"

We stared at each other for a long time, the hatred between us almost a physical thing. She finally let out a sigh of disgust and looked away. "What do you need me to do?"

She didn't trust me and I don't blame her. I owed her for the stunt she'd pulled back at Alkali Lake, not to mention Liberty Island and for being a terrorist in general. I owed her big time and yet she was still the best chance Angela and I had for pulling this thing off. I had learned a long time ago that you don't get in bed with the enemy for any reason. But if the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then my new best bud was standing here before me. I glared at her and slid out a single claw. "If you betray us, you do _anythin'_ that is not part o' the plan, I will gut you, do you understand? I will cut you into little pieces an' scatter the remains for the animals. I'll send your head to Lensherr on a platter an' let him rot in hell for the rest o' his miserable life. Am I absolutely, completely clear?" I have to give her credit for controlling her fear, but her eyes did widen a bit. She knew I wasn't kidding, that I would never kid when it comes to killing. She sneered at me, but nodded in agreement and I retracted my claw. "Fine. Now this is what I need you to do…"

* * *

**AN:** Another chapter down and we'll call it the halfway point...:) I believe this come in at 22 chapters plus epilogue, which is just how it fell out in the end...:) Special thanks to my beta team, especially Turiel Tincdaniel, for being so tireless in their assistance...Extra Special thanks to my readers for sticking with me for so long...and Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were TnTornado, theNightEnchantress, Andromeda Jones, ALEX10671S and immrlucky...:) Mr. Tornado: Just trying to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same...:) Miss Jones: You'll find out soon enough...:) ALEX: Is this soon enough for you? ;-) immrlucky: Yes, i'm getting the reviews...in terms of the story, if you mean the whole thing, it's been about a year and a half in the making...if you mean this one in particular, you'd never believe me if i told you...:) Oh what the heck, i'll tell you anyway...not counting the 8-10 week break i took from writing it to deal with personal issues, i think it took me about a month and half to 2 months to write this one...:) Thanks for reading and especially for reviewing!

**Now, only YOU have the power to speed this up! You want a new chapter before the 6th? Then take the plunge and toss me a review! Just click the little "go" button, say hello or something and i'll post as soon as i get it!**


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

(Scott)

I took Charles' advice and thought about it. I really did consider leaving the team, just walking away and never looking back. I'm not Logan, I'll never be like Logan, and knowing that the next time we go into battle that people may die is not something I can just brush off. Charles assures me that Logan doesn't have a cavalier attitude about it, but simply accepts that bad things happen and doesn't dwell on them over much. I can't help it; I can't turn my emotions off like that.

I've heard that many people don't believe that's the case. They think I'm uptight, distant, even cold, but nothing could be further from the truth. I feel things, I simply don't choose to act upon every emotional impulse. I know what I'm capable of with my power, the kind of damage I can do, how easy it would be to kill dozens of people with my unfiltered blasts. But I don't want to be a killer. I don't want to have that kind of thing on my conscience for the rest of my life. And I don't want the deaths of my fellow X-Men there either.

So, I found myself in quite a dilemma. I didn't want to send them off to die. I didn't want to leave them unprotected by quitting the team. Oh, I know that they're all extremely capable people, even the youngest of them, and that it's terribly arrogant of me to believe that my presence might be the difference between life and death for each and every one of them. But I can't help it. Things used to be so simple twelve years ago, before Logan showed up. We were all tucked away here at the school, safe from the outside world and learning how to use our powers to help people. But Charles had detected Sabretooth in the vicinity of two other mutants, one of which was very young and he didn't want any harm to come to them. It was that day that would change everything, in more ways than I can count.

I really didn't want to believe the things I saw on Logan's x-rays, that someone had actually done those things to him for no reason except to see if they could. People just don't do that kind of stuff to other people. At least, that's what I always thought. But when a tough guy like Logan wakes up screaming because of his dreams, it makes it difficult to ignore. Jean told me once about the things she'd seen the one brief time she'd read his mind and she said it was a minor miracle he slept at all. It was bad enough that they'd done those things to him in the first place, but knowing he'd been completely aware the whole time? It sounded like something out of a comic book or a movie or something, not the kind of thing that could really happen. But it had.

It didn't stop me from hating him for a very long time because of his blatant attempts to get Jean away from me. She chose me in the end, at least that's what Logan told me and I can't believe he'd do anything as kind as lie to me about that to make me feel better. Then he shows back up with Angela in tow and I had to deal with the fact that Logan wasn't the only one they'd mutilated. Just a few months after that, they brought Totem back and I knew. No matter how much I wanted there to be a peaceful resolution between us and normal humans, I knew it could never happen. Peace would have to be paid for in blood and I didn't like it.

I still don't like it. I will _never _like it. Logan told me once that if I wasn't prepared to do whatever I had to do to ensure the survival of myself and my team while in battle, I would always be a liability. That by choosing to disable rather than kill, I was leaving everyone open to be killed by the one that gets back up. I didn't want to believe him and I held out hope that he was wrong until the bitter end.

Well, that bitter end has come and gone. A sniper shot me that none of us knew was there. Countless members of the French police and military gave their lives that day and even if it isn't my fault, I blame myself. Maybe if I'd been willing to do whatever it takes to protect people, we never would have gotten this far. Maybe the Sentinels wouldn't have ever been activated. Maybe we could have found peace long before Liberty Island.

I dream about those dead people almost every night. I'm just as bad as Logan used to be, waking up with barely controlled screams every single time. Now I'm the one that can't sleep, I can't close _my_ eyes without seeing horrors.

Angela was right all those years ago when she answered all the questions the kids and I put to her just after she arrived. I have this power and I have a responsibility to use it. So no, I won't be quitting the team. And even though I make myself sick thinking about it, Logan would be so proud of me if he was here. Because the next time we go out, I won't be holding back. All bets are off.

The next asshole that wants to shoot at me or mine is going to die and I'm going to be the one that kills him.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Sam)

Miss McKenzie has chosen to stay here with us. Not in the house, but in this small town we've settled in. She won't say why, but I'm betting that she saw something and she's afraid we'll need her help. She left for about a week to go and get her things, and when she returned she brought a black van with her. When I asked her what it was for, she just shook her head and said "just in case". Just in case of what, I wonder.

Evie's been flourishing under her tutelage. Her powers are growing at a rapid rate and I speculate that she'll be able to control every aspect of her mutation before her next birthday. When this is all over, if it ever is over, I'm going to invite her to live at the mansion and help other children with their powers. I'm sure that some of her reluctance in the past is directly related to things she's seen with her power, but if there's one thing I learned a long time ago, it's that you can't live your life being afraid of what might happen because of your powers. The alternative is so much worse.

Ororo's showing now and she's so very unhappy about it. She has a little tummy and we can feel the baby moving in there. She's also started to have what Angela had called her "funky baby dreams", which are apparently perfectly normal. But they wake my wife up in the night and there are times where she can't be calmed for hours. Mostly, she dreams she can hear our baby crying somewhere but she can't find him, or she dreams that we go out somewhere and she looks away for the briefest of moments, only to turn back and find the baby gone. She's even dreamed that people come in the middle of the night and cut the baby out of her and take him away to do God only knows what to him. Those are the nights where it's almost impossible to calm her enough to go back to sleep.

It finally got bad enough that I broke down and asked Evie if she saw anything happening like that. She said "nothing like that, no", but that doesn't mean she didn't see something bad. But because she doesn't want to make the future happen, she won't talk about anything until it happens, unless she sees something happening so far away that we couldn't affect the outcome now if we wanted to. Those visions get forwarded to Charles and the X-Men to take care of. She hasn't had many of them, but there have been enough to cause me worry.

Mostly, it's anti-mutant hate groups like the FOH that figure prominently in those visions, but sometimes it's these new mutants that she says come from the same place as the "bad men" who attacked the mansion and forced us to leave in the first place, which means Weapon X, which means they're part of the augmented mutant army the Director is building. Charles tells me we now have an agent inside Weapon X who can get by undetected and she's the one feeding information back to him, which he forwards to us if he thinks we need to know. He won't tell me who it is, only that she's working towards a solution to that army should they ever be set loose. I only hope it never comes to that.

Because you see, I'm going to be a father soon and I have a duty to protect my wife and child from harm. How can I do that if I know that there's a madman out there creating an army of unstoppable mutants whose only purpose is to kill their own kind? And since they're coming from Weapon X, it's safe to assume they'll be backed up by Sentinels, since we know that project didn't die as we previously thought. The presence of a Sentinel at the invasion of the mansion last spring is all the evidence we need to prove that.

So even though about half of the population has accepted us, even come to trust us, there are still enough out there who don't that will embrace this new Holocaust when it starts. And when that happens, I'm going back to the school and the X-Men. Because it's no longer a question of "if". It _will_ happen, we just don't know when.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_Nine months, two weeks, six days, eight hours and thirty-three minutes since mom and dad sent me away._

_Erin's moving to live closer to us. She says she has more to teach me, but she's lying. I don't know why she even tried, since I can see the difference when she touches me. I know she knows I know she's lying, but that's what she told the others and I'm not gonna be the one to say anything about it. If she wants to tell them, that's up to her. But I saw what she saw and I'm really, really scared._

_I saw that army of people like mom and dad, with the metal all through them. I saw them with those big scary robots, going through big cities and little towns, looking for mutants and dragging them into the streets. I saw them taking little children, little BABIES, away from their parents and then killing the parents if they wouldn't join up with the army. I saw them shooting older kids who said the same thing and just leaving them in the streets. I saw regular soldiers trying to stop them, but they heal like mom and dad do, so you can't just shoot them to kill them. I saw them killing those regular soldiers and moving on, just killing anyone who tried to stop them._

_I saw the President talking on the television, saying the country was in a state of emergency, telling people to stay in their houses after dark and to not try and fight the bad army. I saw Uncle Charles talking to another older guy who wore a really weird helmet. I saw the X-Men fighting the bad soldiers and the other old guy was there, making them not move somehow, but one of the bad soldiers did something and made his helmet fly away. But I don't know what happens next for sure, cuz I've seen too many things to be sure._

_I've even dreamed a bunch of different ways that it might end and I asked Erin about that. She always said that dreams are always true visions, that we can't change them a lot by what we do now, so how could I see more than one way for that to end? She said that it probably depends on the actions of people we can't talk to so that we can tell them about what I'm seeing. I think she must mean mom and dad by that, since we can tell Uncle Charles everything I see. Mom and dad are the only ones we can't tell anything to, because they're with the bad men, trying to make them stop._

_But I don't think they will make them stop. I think something is going to happen that will make them leave before they're ready. I don't know what, but I've already seen them running away from an army place in the desert, carrying two little girls with them. They also have a man that looks like a doctor and two other men that look like regular soldiers with them and one of the soldier guys is carrying some kind of big black plastic bag over his shoulder with a zipper on it. I don't know what's in there, but I know mom wouldn't leave without it. I saw them again later in a little cabin somewhere and it was snowing, then again fighting a bunch of the bad soldiers in a big city. But I haven't seen anything else after that, so I still don't know when we'll be together again._

_Diary, I miss them so much. I know I'll see them again someday, but I want to see them now, real and in person. I want to hug my daddy and have a tickle fight and I want my mommy to read me a story._

_How funny is that? I thought I was too old for mommy and daddy. I guess I was wrong._

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Angela)

When Logan told me what happened with Mystique, I thought he was fucking crazy. How the hell he could trust that bitch after everything she's done was beyond me. But when he outlined the ultimate plan for me, I grudgingly agreed that it made a kind of sense. But I also told him that if she put one toe out of line or laid one finger on him, I would kill her myself. He said he didn't have a problem with that.

He was still assigned to Dr. Lee, which was all part of the plan. As long as he was needed to help solve the adamantium poisoning problem, neither one of us would be sent into the field. The Director had us trained in pairs for a reason, putting together the teams he thought would be the most effective and even he wasn't stupid enough to try and destroy that dynamic. It takes a long time to get an effective pair, because the two people involved have to be able to consider their strategies according to the power set of the pair. Logan and I were simple compared to some of the others in that our powers were very similar. But now that he had a wide array of abilities at his disposal, from flyers to the super-strong, it was even more important that the teams be trained in every way possible before sending them into the field. That was my new, quasi-permanent job.

Of course, the biggest problem I had with any of them was the conditioning they were all put through before coming to us. The only telepath we had here permanently was Phoenix and she was never used for anything so pedestrian as telepathic conditioning. The bulk of the Director's telepaths were kept in other places, no more than two per base, because they simply could not _be_ conditioned. That was because the Director wouldn't have any telepaths under his control that were below a Class Three, because anything less wouldn't have the talent to do what he wanted them to do. They were mostly kept under control by other means, though I have never learned what those were. Knowing how the man works though, I would bet that he had their families under lock and key, threatening to hurt or even kill them if they didn't cooperate. I'm also sure there was physical torture involved as well, sensory dep, whatever he had to do to ensure their continued cooperation. I really hoped either Logan or I would be the one to kill the Director, but if we did have to cut out early and let Mystique do it, I was okay with that too. As long as he died, brutally, I would be happy.

But back to the conditioning. Every operative that came to me had already been worked over by the time they got here and part of that conditioning was suppressing their emotional responses. It was another thing that didn't transfer over with the healing factor, the primal urges of "hunt, kill, mate" that occupy our thoughts much of the time. You can give a pyrokinetic a healing factor, but you can't make him feral. Not unless the normal emotional responses are almost completely suppressed can you even come close. All people have a little voice in the back of their head that tells them when to fight and when to flee. It tells them when they're in danger and when the danger is greater than they can handle. It's an important part of the instincts of each and every person on the planet. What the Director didn't understand was that people like Logan and me still have that "fight or flight" instinct, but rather than react to it alone, we also took other factors into consideration in the time it takes to blink. Terrain, strength of the foe, weather, civilian presence, it all went through an internal filter and gave us all we needed to know. The fact that we pretty much never used the "flight" portion of that lizard brain response is beside the point. We didn't deny our basic natures in that regard; we're predators first, people second. The fact that we could control the predator is what sets us apart. And a predator would never walk away from a fight.

But these new people? They had their emotions so buried that they were more or less completely sociopathic. Naturally, they had some emotions that were left pretty much alone, mostly anger. I know how powerful rage can be as a weapon, especially when you lose control of it. There have been times where Logan was so immersed in his rage that I wasn't sure he'd ever come back from it, especially in our earliest missions together. But since regaining his memories, he'd told me that he'd always had that inside him, this feeling that made him want to lash out at everything around him. That had been the reason he'd originally gone to Japan, in hopes of finding someone that would help him to control the animal inside him that howled for release. He'd become the last student of his sensei, the last samurai that man would ever teach and to this day he is a credit to that man. But none of these new people would benefit from knowing such things.

There's only so much a single person can do to train people like that, to teach them things that are nothing more than instinctive for me. And as much as I wanted to short them on their training, I knew I could never get away with it. The Colonel would know, so the Director would know and my ass would be tossed into sensory dep faster than I could blink. So I trained them and dreamt every night of the day they'd be sent out into the world, and every night I saw the X-Men die in a variety of creative and brutal ways. But the worst part was that sometimes Logan and I were leading that charge.

His nightmares had ended long ago, but mine were just beginning.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"How'd the trainin' go today?" Logan asked as we had dinner a few nights later.

I shrugged and stabbed an underdone potato. "All right I suppose. They're fucking psychos, the lot of them. You'd think they extracted Sabretooth's crazy gene and gave that to them too."

"That bad?"

"Yeah, pretty much. The guys don't wanna take order from me because I'm a woman and a little one to boot and the women don't wanna listen to me because they think they can do better without my help." I shook my head and concentrated on the sad looking sliced beef on my plate. "I swear, if it wasn't for the fact that I can kick all their asses in my sleep, I'd have given them all up as lost causes a long time ago."

He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Any chance o' you gettin' someone else assigned to 'em? Tigress maybe?"

"I don't know. Maybe I can get her as an assistant when her and Asp get back from South Africa. But you know if I tell the Colonel I can't handle it, she'll assign me to a new partner and sent me back into the field."

"No fuckin' way. I won't let that happen."

"And how would you stop her, huh? Kill her?"

"It's crossed my mind," he mumbled, then sighed. "But I guess we'll haveta live with things the way they are. Just wish they weren't bein' so well-trained."

"Yeah, tell me about it. If she'd just given them to Tigress in the first place, we wouldn't have to worry about the X-Men handling them. Echo took her out quite nicely back when you had your memory bust open."

"Yeah I remember you tellin' me 'bout that. Nice work on her part."

"She had you to thank for that, lover."

"True." He looked around, but except for a pair of privates in the far corner, we were alone in the mess hall. "So the doc thinks he's come up with somethin' that'll suppress Phoenix's powers for about three days at a time. An' he's been told that she's not a candidate for the healin' factor, so that's a plus."

"I should hope not. He doesn't have a telepath strong enough to condition her anyway." I put down my fork, tired of playing with food that was barely edible and wasn't appealing to me anyway. "What about the other one?"

"She hasn't been exposed to anythin' yet, even though her healin' factor's already active. I'm guessin' they're savin' that for when she's older an' they wanna teach her whatever lessons they think she needs to learn."

"Torture her. You can say it, Logan. I know what they do to us in the name of science."

He looked down and clenched his jaw. "Yeah well, I don't like thinkin' 'bout that too much. But the doc's got her on the schedule tomorrow for some kinda testin', which doesn't sound too good to me."

"You gonna be there?"

"I have been assigned to him an' I see no reason not to report bright an' early tomorrow mornin'. But the good news is that since she's not been exposed, she's not adapted. We can keep her drugged up pretty well for a good long while."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. We now had all the information we needed to end this, all we needed now was the opportunity. "I want to take the doctor and Grant with us when we leave."

"Agreed, though Grant pro'bly already has an exit strategy." He glanced up as the two grunts in the corner got up and left. "Any ideas where to go?"

"I think the cabin, for a little while at least. Get our bearings, lick our wounds, give us a chance to plan our next move."

"That ain't a bad idea darlin'. But what about the kids? I don't think they've done anythin' to the little one, but Phoenix? The doc says he can suppress her telepathy, but not her telekinesis. She's more'n strong enough to toss us both 'round if she wanted to."

"So we'll just have to make her not want to, won't we?"

"An' how do ya propose we do that?"

"Well, you're down there a lot these days. Maybe you can make friends with her."

"Darlin', she can read my mind without tryin'. She'll see everythin' we're plannin' if I try that."

"She probably already has, that first month we were here and they haven't tried to stop us or limit us in months. They know it's what we want, so if she still sees that it won't be a surprise to anyone. Right now, they all think we're back with the program completely and _willingly_. Do you have a better plan?"

"No, I don't," he grumbled. "But I ain't gonna do that unless I think I can really get away with it, all right? I'd rather take her outta here the way she is an' keep her doped up too if we have to. We can make friends with her later."

"Fine." I pushed away from the table and stood up with Logan right behind me. I walked him back to our quarters and gave him a passionate kiss before letting him go on without me. I had a night training session with some of the new operatives and wouldn't see him again until morning. He let me go a bit reluctantly and made my way to the surface to help a bunch of crazy people learn how to kill the people I loved the most in the world. I hoped I wouldn't have to do it for much longer; I wanted to be out of here way before this army was deployed.

I had no idea I was going to get my wish.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

About three weeks later, I was feeling pretty run down. I'd been doing almost exclusively night training for that time and it was fucking with my body clock. I may have some animalistic traits, but being a nocturnal creature is not part of my power set. In that time span, I usually met with Logan for breakfast and dinner, but we had precious little private time together, though we did manage to squeeze a few hours in here and there when the urge was too great for us to ignore.

The night training came to an end and it was so nice to be back in my husband's arms every night. It was also just in time, because the Director had an op he wanted us to go on that he said required our "special" touch. That basically translates to "wanted someone dead in the most spectacular way possible". And when you want the most damage caused in the least amount of time, you send Wolverine and Hellcat, so that's just what he did.

It was hard for me to remember that the seasons changed dramatically everywhere else, since the desert only has three seasons – hot, hotter and oh my gods where's the pool? So when we stepped off our transport plane in Maine and it was winter, I immediately tried to get right back on. I hadn't signed on to hike for two days to get to this remote cabin in the middle of winter. But Logan just grabbed me and dragged me to the tarmac and I watched longingly as the warm plane took off again. I think that was the only time I'd ever been willing to get on _any _aircraft without being doped up. We got into the car that had been provided and drove to a hotel that had a reservation for us under the names "Paul and Diane Prescott". We'd only be there one day, just long enough for us to finish the last of our planning and rent a vehicle more suited to the rough terrain we were going to be driving through for the first day at least. After that, it would be left in a special parking lot reserved for hikers and we'd have to slog through what looked a hundred feet of snow to the private retreat of whatever poor sod had pissed off the Director this week.

So we fell into our normal mission routine. Once in the hotel room, we fell upon each other like starving people and spent the first few hours in bed. Then came room service and planning over rare steaks and red wine, followed by checking our gear and sleeping. We rented a Jeep, tossed our gear into it and drove to the parking lot, where we locked it up tight and set out on foot. After two days of cold camping and eating dry food prepared on a propane hot plate, we got to the cabin. Logan went in to take care of the target while I took care of retrieving whatever it was he may have taken with him in the form of computer disks and any hard copy files I thought might be pertinent. We hiked back to the Jeep, returned it to the rental company and went back to the hotel.

I woke up early the next morning and immediately dashed to the bathroom to throw up, a sense of complete horror settling over me. I didn't want to believe it, didn't want it to be true, no matter how much I may have wanted it only a year before. But I had to be sure, so I slipped out of the room and walked half a block to an all-night drugstore just down the road. A few hours later, Logan awoke to find me weeping uncontrollably in the corner, my knees clenched to my chest, something small and white clutched in my hand.

He was at my side in a heartbeat. "Angela, what's wrong?" He asked, clearly alarmed, but I just shook my head, unable to speak. "Angela! What is it?" I held out the small white object and he took it from me, not understanding what I was trying to say. "What is this? What's this mean?"

I took a deep breath and looked at him, tears still spilling unchecked down my cheeks. "Logan, we have to get the hell out of there and soon, real soon."

"What? Why? We're not ready!"

"Then we have to get ready and I mean _now_! We can't wait one more month, one more _week_! I won't chance it!"

"Chance what?"

"Logan, I'm pregnant."

* * *

**AN:** Hehehehehehehe...how you like that twist:) And there's plenty more where that came from, i promise you...:) Special thanks to my beta team...if you don't know who they are by now, then you haven't been paying attention! Extra Special thinks to my readers for staying with me this long...and Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were Andromeda Jones, MidLifeCrisis, theNightEnchantress and immrlucky...:) Miss Jones: I'm in the States, in the Midwest to be a little more exact...:) And thanks for the compliment! Dee (MidLifeCrisis): How's your dad? I'm still sending the good mojo for him...and the reason i get these out so fast is BECAUSE i don't post anything until it's done...when you have nothing left to complete, there's no reason to wait weeks between updates...:) immrlucky: I'm not gonna tell you if the ending's happy or not...you'll just have to keep reading to find out! 

**Now, immrlucky also said that if the rest of this were posted in one day, he'd read the whole thing in one sitting...and we all know i'll post a new chapter for every new reviewer i get...otherwise, you have to wait 3-4 days for new stuff...:) Only TEN**** new people need to review and you could make immrlucky's dream come true:)**


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

(Kitty)

I know it's terrible to say, but I think getting shot is almost the best thing that could have happened to Scott. I mean, it's terrible that it happened and he was pretty bad for a while, but in a way it was good that it happened. But I think now he really believes the stuff Logan and Angela used to tell us about how bad things really can be out there. He knew it before, but I don't think he truly believed it until he got shot.

He's been driving all the teams harder than ever before, even going so far as to have Buzz program as many mutants with every power imaginable into the Danger Room, but also making sure they had healing factors and metal skeletons. We already knew how to take out Logan and Angela - no one could advance to Alpha team if they didn't pass that scenario – but now we had scenarios with a dozen, two dozen mutants that are just as hard to kill, but could also fly, spit acid, control fire and everything else Buzz could think up. We've all taken to keeping a personal score in there and even I'm not doing that well. I was one of the first ones from Beta to pass to Alpha from the original scenario and that's only because you can't kill what doesn't have physical form in the first place. I can't be shot, stabbed, strangled, broken, maimed, spindled, folded or otherwise injured unless I go solid. And I'm only solid as an act of will, not the other way around. Sure, it's automatic now and I can even hold form while I'm asleep, but if I relax that control for even a second, I go intangible and nothing can hurt me, not even Logan.

But there are times when I'm on a mission that I need to be solid, so that's what I do. It's in those moments that I can come to real harm, because I'm nothing really special except for being a ghost girl. I mean, I can fight pretty well because they trained me really well. Logan even gave me a pair of these really cool daggers called sais and I got pretty good with those, even though Scott didn't want any of us to use weapons back then. But when I'm the one that has to go in almost alone with only my powers and a couple daggers to retrieve a bunch of mutant kids who are being tortured, it's hard. There would be like three of us and a dozen of them and it is so hard to get through. Piotr always comes with me, but the third person is always different. When it's Kyro, I don't mind so much because he's as much of a badass as Logan. But when it's someone like Jubilee or Julian, it's not as easy and that's when I get hurt. At least it's just the Danger Room, so it's not _really_ getting hurt, but it still sucks. I'm still in the top five for getting through successfully with no injuries, but even I only get about four out of ten.

That one guy, Mr. Bennington, has been talking with the Professor a lot lately. He still gives us information on stuff that needs more than just regular people to help out, like rescue missions or attacks. But this is different, I can tell. I think they're planning something but I'm not sure what. I know the Professor wants Magneto around, just in case that army he told us about gets out, but I don't have to like that. First chance he gets, he'll turn on us like a rabid dog and I don't know if the Professor can handle having his heart broken like that again. He hasn't been looking too good lately and I overheard him talking to Dr. McCoy about having headaches all the time. If there's one thing we all learn about here, it's the problems that go along with all our powers. We need to know, because you never know when something bad might happen during a mission and we all need to know how to act if that happens. So if the Professor's having bad headaches all the time, it probably means he's having a problem related to his telepathy.

I probably don't have to say this, but that scares me more than an army of Logans. The Professor is like a father to a lot of us, even those of us who still have families that'll talk to us. He's the one that convinced me to come to the school, to learn about my powers and how to control them, and later how to use them to help other people. I can't imagine this place without him, but lately it's all I can think about. I don't know why I didn't think about it before, but he's actually pretty old, so I know he'll die someday. I just thought someday was a lot farther away. But the way he looks lately, I think someday is coming really soon. And I don't want it to. I just hope Logan and Angela come home before it happens. I know she'd never forgive herself if she wasn't here before he dies.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Storm)

Rogue had a close call today, coming back from the corner market. Someone said they recognized her from some of the news stories about the X-Men and she only got out of it by saying that she bleached her hair to look the way it does because she saw the same story and thought it looked "cool and punk rock". It was the second time since we've been here that someone in the general public recognized us - the first being my doctor - and I was afraid it meant we'd have to move soon. Perhaps it had been naïve of me to believe that we could settle safely in the first place we came to, but I didn't want to run halfway around the world. Still, she went to the store and bought some hair color and for the first time since she'd gotten her skunk stripe, her hair was all one uniform color.

I've been getting bigger every day and I finally decided that it didn't look so bad. After all, that's Sam's baby in there and how could anything about that be bad? I'm still glad that I'm pregnant over the winter as opposed to the summer like Angela had been. She'd been so miserable some days that it was hard not to pity her, although no one was stupid enough to say it out loud. Not that we were afraid of her, per se, but because we didn't want to make it worse for her. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

We also got another message from Charles about the Weapon X program and it was more than a little frightening. Buzz had somehow managed to get a hold of some files that indicated the Director was planning on taking the two of them to another facility for a full telepathic overhaul. It was to be the last thing he did before deploying his army, to ensure they would lead those people without reservation, without anything approaching human emotion. It also seemed to indicate that he'd only allowed them to operate this long without telepathic interference because they'd been working so well without it. However, the telepath they have called Phoenix had gotten everything out of them about their plan to kill him and destroy the base before they left. But he'd never mentioned it to anyone because he wanted the two of them to believe he trusted them. And since they'd done so well so far, killing anyone he asked them to kill without question, he'd never seen a reason to do that until now.

Because you see, his army is almost ready to go. The last batch of augmented mutants are being sent to the many bases abroad for their final training, with the elite forces being trained by Logan and Angela personally. So there would be at least a hundred and twenty-five people that would be that much harder to stop. Fortunately, they'd also trained us and most of the other X-Men, and Totem is still there training the rest, so there will be no one else better prepared to stop them, even if we are outnumbered something like twenty to one. We'll stop that army or die trying.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_Ten months, two days, five hours and eight minutes since mom and dad sent me away._

_I finally saw it! I saw me and my mommy and daddy together again! And guess what? It's gonna happen soon and it won't be bad! I would cheer, but it doesn't look right when you write down a cheer. Oh, what the heck, I'll do it anyway. Woohoo!_

_My dreams about the bad army changed again and it's staying the same now. I've had the same one four times and every time, it's just the same. Mommy isn't fighting them but daddy is, along with the X-Men. Mommy isn't there because she's gonna have a baby. She stays at the mansion with me and it made me so happy to see that that I cried when I woke up. Aunt Rogue thought I saw something bad, but when I told her about it, she cried too. I think she misses them almost as much as I do, because my daddy is like a daddy to her too. Maybe I'll stop calling her Aunt Rogue and start calling her my sister, because she really almost is._

_I told Erin about my dream too and she said she saw the same thing, only not so clear. She said she only got bits of the pictures, like a movie with parts missing. She said that was part of what makes me more powerful than her, because I can see things in whole movies instead of broken ones. She also said that I would be able to see absolutely true things while I meditate someday, since that's like dreaming while you're awake, but that my little flashes that come when I don't expect might not always be true. But she also says I might be powerful enough someday that everything I see will be always true. I hope not, because I've been seeing some terrible things._

_I see the big robots again, sometimes with the bad army and sometimes not. I see the bad army broken into smaller pieces and killing people who try to fight them. And I see THE Bad Man, the one that wanted to kidnap me all that time ago. I can't believe that was almost a year ago, but it has been. I see him hurting my mommy and daddy, I see him cutting them open and doing terrible things, but I think that's stuff that already happened. But sometimes I see him with the bad army and he's telling them to kill my mommy and daddy before they kill anyone else on the X-Men. And then sometimes, he tells some of the bad army to kill all the other X-Men before they kill mommy and daddy, so they have to watch. It worries me a lot, but I have to believe that mommy and daddy and all the X-Men are going to be okay, because anything else makes my stomach hurt._

_But it doesn't matter right now, because mommy and daddy are coming home and we'll be together again, with a new brother or sister soon after. I can hardly wait!_

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Logan)

"You're what?" I remember that was the first thing I said when Angela told me the news. Not that I was happy, not that I loved her, I didn't even take her into my arms to hold her and share in the happiness that should have followed that.

Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled! I was just as happy about this child as I was when she told me about Evie. Well, after my mind sorted itself out, but that's beside the point. The fact remained then that being a father made me so happy I couldn't contain it. And had our situation been different here, I would have been just as happy, but I wasn't.

We're careful, I mean _really_ careful. A woman's scent changes in subtle ways when she's fertile and we usually didn't have actual _sex_ during those times. We're both of us creative enough to satisfy our wants without doing that during her most fertile times, so we hadn't worried about it. But we'd obviously slipped at least once, because now she had a new life inside her again. And there was _no way _we could let the Director find out about it. Which meant all of our carefully laid plans were going to have be accelerated in a big way.

I took her to a hospital right after she told me, since she was throwing up in between bouts of tears and I was worried about her. They did an ultrasound and said she was about a month along, so her nausea was perfectly normal and they prescribed something for her to take to settle her stomach. Fortunately, I had enough cash on me to pay right there at the time of treatment, so we didn't have any unusual charges on the credit cards they give us when we go out on an op. But it still threw everything we wanted to do pretty much right out the window. She was right; we were now officially out of time.

When we got back to base, I sent a note to Grant through Dr. Lee to meet with me again in one of our usual private meeting areas outside the main buildings. I told him what was going on and that we had to step everything up. He simply said he'd handle the exit strategy and let the two of us worry about everything else. I also had another meeting with Mystique and told her, because she was going to be instrumental in getting us out of there alive. She knew she'd have to go back, but she'd just take the form of another soldier and no one would ever have to know that "Andrew Smith" had anything to do with it. But we did have one thing in common, much as I hated to admit it. We both wanted the Director dead. I was still gonna kill her someday, but it would have to wait until the current crisis was over.

We still had to wait several days to put the plan into motion, because we'd all thought we would have more time to work out the bugs. We didn't know how we would handle the new operatives, what we would do about the regular security and all the handlers running around, not to mention the rest of the civilian staff and the elite troops that protected the Director and the Colonel. But it was the good doctor who came up with a means to take care of at least part of the problem.

While we were gone, they had completed final construction on a new underground bunker, adamantium lined and able to withstand all but a direct nuclear blast. The Director had it built on the off chance that something of that nature would happen, because he's a paranoid bastard who makes me look as laid back as Buzz. It was large enough to house all of the regular troops, civilian and support staff, not comfortably but well enough to hold out for about half a year. Which meant it was more than large enough for over a hundred augmented mutants. There were several teams in the field, but that couldn't be helped. There's always someone in the field and no one would be recalled until the Director was ready to put his end game into motion. Too bad for him, we beat him to the punch.

Angela said she wanted to "borrow" the bunker for a special training session, because the walls would be able to withstand anything that any of the operatives could throw at it. The Colonel pointed out that any of the projective energy powers would rebound off the walls, putting them in danger and that's why Angela said she wanted it. She said she wanted them to be ready for absolutely any contingency and even though the chances of anyone else having a bunker like that were non-existent, she also knew that not all of those powers were held back by adamantium alone. Some of them would rebound off steel just fine and there were plenty of steel buildings in the world. Those without powers of that nature had to be prepared to do some fancy dodging in the case of rebounds like that, so the Colonel reluctantly approved the session for early in the week following our return.

That was where the doc would come in. He'd found a compound that suppressed the healing factor called carbornadium, something that had been developed to take out healing mutants that could not be controlled. It wouldn't put any of them out forever, but it would suppress it long enough to make them all perfectly susceptible to a hefty dose of a sleeping agent, enough to keep them all out of commission for at least twelve hours. Plenty of time for us to get the fuck out of there, even if we had to cut down every human being between there and the door. The carbornadium was going to be given to them earlier that same day, since all of us had been scheduled for full-body CT scans and the contrast needed to be ingested about an hour before the test could be performed. So they would each report to the lab, drink their stuff and then report to the bunker for their training while the "dye" worked through their systems. Angela and I would be given cups of plain water.

Grant was going to provide Angela an excuse to leave the room only a few moments after getting everyone in there. His job was to call over the com, saying the Colonel wanted to speak to her before she began the training session. She would leave and Mystique would already be in position in the secured computer center for the bunker to scramble the lock codes and release the gas. In the meantime, Dr. Lee would prepare hypos with the sedatives in them to neutralize both Phoenix and X-23 to get them out quietly. As the head researcher, he had unrestricted access to the both of them and he would simply tell his colleagues he was sedating them for testing purposes. It was as sound of a plan as we could come up with in the short amount of time we had; it would work. It had to.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Angela, get the fuck down!" I shouted as I shoved my claws into the belly of another poor kid who'd been stationed in this shitty place. The first part of the plan had gone off beautifully and there was a crew of soldiers at the bunker trying to burn through even as the rest were trying to prevent our escape. Grant had already gone outside, technically as part of the ground crew assigned to make sure we didn't get that far. In reality, he was going to be waiting in a bulletproof transport, ready to scoop us up and get us to the exit he'd worked out for us with Bennington. We'd specifically requested it not be the X-Men; we didn't want them to see us here, at our very worst. And we weren't quite ready to face them just yet.

Angela ducked on my command, then came up and executed a beautiful roundhouse kick to the guy that had tried to stab her in the back. I finished with the guy in front of me and moved on to the next one, dispatching soldiers as efficiently as possible. Mystique was somewhere behind us, carrying what Angela considered the most precious cargo of all; Emma's body. She flatly refused to leave without her, not after everything we'd been through. Grant said he would see that she made her way to the mansion with whoever was getting us out.

Dr. Lee was already holed up in one of the smaller bunkers on the surface outside that Grant had helpfully cleared the day before. It wasn't much more than a shed really, previously holding tools and equipment to repair some of the vehicles on site, but it was in pretty bad shape and moving the stuff out didn't seem unlikely and no one questioned it. He had Phoenix and X-23 in there, waiting for the two- well three - of us to finish up.

We finally finished off the knot of soldiers in this area and Mystique picked Emma back up and we rushed down another hallway, a little closer to freedom. I was worried about Angela fighting in her condition, but I understood there was little choice in the matter. She was taking as much care as she could, but I worried that it might be too much. Then I remembered she'd come to find me while she was pregnant with Evie and came through that more or less all right, so I pushed my concerns to the side. We approached another intersection and I scented the gun oil and flop sweat of soldiers who knew they were about to face their greatest nightmares. I motioned to the two women and Mystique carefully lowered the body bag to the floor before morphing into me. It was a ploy we'd been using with great success, because they didn't know which one to shoot. That moment of hesitation was all we needed to get the drop on them.

I rounded the corner followed by Mystique, Angela hot on her heels. As expected, the smell of their fear tripled when they saw two of me and they paused just long enough for us to tear into them. The claws that she could make weren't adamantium, but they were more than good enough to slice and dice a bunch of scared soldiers. Angela took the right while I went straight up the middle, drawing as much of their fire as I could, with Mystique to my left. I heard a gunshot followed by a grunt of pain from my woman, but she was still fighting so I didn't worry about it. I slashed guns to pieces, eviscerated men, sliced through limbs like they were warm butter, my anger and bloodlust running free, the animal in full control. A soldier whipped me across the face with the butt of his rifle, loosening teeth and tearing the skin on my cheek. I shoved my claws into his chest and threw the corpse into another soldier trying to get at me, knocking them both into Mystique's claws and she stabbed the still-living man in the kidneys, dropping him like a stone. A bullet tore through my left shoulder and I lashed out, cutting his arm off at the elbow before sweeping his legs and finishing him off with a stomp to the face. Another man stumbled into my path, his face bleeding from the holes where his eyes used to be, five deep lacerations across his face. I slit his throat without a thought and turned to find another enemy, only to find I was alone in the hall with the two women.

Mystique went back for Emma without prompting and we moved on, meeting no more resistance until we reached the main level. We'd activated the elevator, but it was a decoy; we took the stairs up and came out behind the knot of thirty men and women waiting for us, two of which happened to be Asp and Tigress, fresh from their latest mission. We'd been worried about the possibility of them returning before we finished, so the doctor had given us hypos of carbornadium to use on them should we need to. However, the only one of us with a chance of getting there was Mystique. She lowered Emma to the floor gently and morphed into a soldier, complete with several very convincing wounds and I handed her the syringes. She slipped them into a pocket and I grabbed her around the neck before shoving her into the huge bay that made up most of the main level to the base.

The door slammed shut behind me and they all turned as one, their weapons trained on us. "Don't shoot!" Mystique shouted.

"Wolverine, let him go and we'll spare your life," the squad leader said, never taking his weapon off me. "You have to know that we can't just let you leave like this, not again."

"Fuck you!" I shouted and shook Mystique, bringing a single claw up to her throat. "I heard 'bout your plans for us an' it ain't gonna happen!"

Asp's eyes widened and Tigress actually hissed when I said that. I really didn't know if they had anything planned for us, but their reaction confirmed that they did, even if I didn't know what it really was. "Don't be a fool, Wolverine!" Asp said, dropping into a crouch. "You belong to us, don't you understand that by now?"

"I don't belong to anyone 'cept my wife! Now stand down or I'll gut this guy like a fish!"

"Even if you get past us, there's fifty men outside waiting for you. How many more have to die before you realize you can't get away with this?"

"I'll kill a thousand if I have to! Now drop 'em, this is my last warning!"

I don't know who actually fired the round that hit me in the forehead, but I dropped like a sack of rocks, my vision black and my hearing all but gone. I released Mystique as I fell and I hoped she'd be able to get the shit into Asp and Tigress before too long. Angela and I had special plans for the two of them.

Angela screamed somewhere outside of me and my rage doubled, tripled, giving me enough strength to swim back to consciousness. I opened my eyes to see her doubled over, her hands clenched to her right breast. I snarled and leapt to my feet, my claws popping out and taking the head off the guy who'd tried to cut her breast off. She stumbled over to the wall and pulled her hand away, and I winced at the sight. Her nipple was hanging on by a thread and it was bleeding pretty hard, but her eyes hardened as she stood up, running on rage and adrenaline as much as I was. I spun around and saw I was face to face with Asp. "Wolverine, I have waited for this moment, when I wouldn't have to hold back," he said and suddenly spit in my face. My eyes felt like they burst into flame as he punched me solidly in the gut and I realized he'd just spit his venom into my face, something I'd never been exposed to. My healing factor kicked in a few seconds later, but it was enough for him to get in a few more solid hits, before I heard the sound of a knife being flicked open and he buried it in my gut to the hilt.

"Logan!" I heard Angela cry out and suddenly I was alone. I wiped my hand across my eyes, my vision still a bit blurry but clear enough for me to watch as she literally ripped Asp's throat out. He gagged and fell to one knee, but she didn't stop there. She grabbed his hand as he lashed out with his knife and wrenched his wrist, causing him to drop the blade. She scooped it up and plunged it into his back, then pulled it out and kicked him to the floor. His eyes widened as she stabbed downward, perfectly placed to miss the ribs and get him right in the heart. He shuddered and went still, but she still didn't stop. She pulled the knife out of his chest and opened up his gut, spilling his intestines to the floor, then proceeded to cut the entrails to ribbons. Even if he could come back from that, which I doubt very much, he'd be weeks in the healing process.

I threw myself back into the skirmish, cutting and stabbing as I went along. At some point, Mystique had morphed back into me and was making quick work of the people she encountered until Tigress was the only one left. I had just literally cut the legs out from under a guy, then kicked him in the head when I felt claws rake down my back. I turned with a growl and there she stood, a grinning coldly and gesturing. "Come on, old man, let's see what you've really got."

I didn't bother to answer her, I just leapt at her, my claws flashing in the overhead lights. She dodged neatly, spinning into a kick that I blocked with my claws, opening her thigh to the bone. She screamed in pain and went down, the wound bleeding profusely; I'd hit the artery. Angela joined me, followed by Mystique morphing into her true form as she walked up. My wife still had the knife she'd used to kill Asp in her hand, dripping with gore, and she knelt over Tigress. "What was that you called me? Oh yeah, your 'obsolete sister', that was it."

"You are obsolete, you stupid bitch," Tigress spat, then winced. "You'll never make it out of here alive."

"Oh yes, I will. But before I go, I'm making _you_ obsolete, just like I promised." She brought the knife down in a blur, opening Tigress' belly and spilling her guts all over the floor. Her eyes went wide as Angela reached inside up to her elbow and she screamed. A moment later, Angela yanked her hand out and showed Tigress her own heart. "I only wish I could kill you again." She said and tossed the useless organ aside.

"Wow, I didn't think you had it in you Hellcat," Mystique commented dryly.

"Shut the fuck up," Angela snapped. "You have no idea what I'm capable of."

"I do now." I looked over at Mystique and she seemed to be a lighter shade of blue. "I'll just go get your daughter now, okay?"

"Yeah, you do that. We still gotta fight through the guys outside before this is over."

Mystique just nodded and went back to the stairwell to retrieve the body bag. I turned to Angela and peeled her shirt aside to look at her wound. "Shit darlin', that looks bad," I whispered.

"Don't worry, it's not fatal and it won't be permanent," she replied. "Hurts like fucking hell though."

"I can imagine." Mystique came back with Emma and we walked towards the large bay door that was the only way in or out of this room. We were halfway there when an explosion rocked the base, followed by heavy gunfire. We rushed to the doors but didn't open them, making ready to fight whoever came in. After about a minute, the gunfire stopped and we heard the doors begin to open. Mystique put Emma down out of the line of fire and morphed back into me, but we all relaxed when the only person standing there was Grant. I looked past him to the wreckage that was outside. "Dahell happened out here?"

"Air support," he said cryptically. He motioned to Mystique. "Do yourself a favor and morph into a soldier, ok? You're still on the most wanted list and I don't want anyone using this situation to their advantage."

"Whatever," she replied and once again, "Andrew Smith" stood there, looking a bit bloody but standing.

"That's good, I already told the extraction team that I had another collaborator in here. Let's get the doc and the kids and get the fuck out of here."

"Music to my ears," I said and I walked out of Area 51 for the last time, a free man once and for all.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The jet that picked us up could have been one of the Blackbirds back at Xavier's, except the weaponry was far more sophisticated. We strapped the two unconscious kids into seats, then carefully laid Emma across another row and strapped her in as well. The doc made Angela sit down as he treated her wounds, reattaching her nipple with small, careful stitches. She argued that she didn't need all that, just some bandages to hold it in place, but the doctor insisted that it was the least he could do since we were giving him his freedom. Once we were dropped off, he would be continuing on to Xavier's to fill them in on everything he knew, including the process used to manufacture the carbornadium. Grant would be staying with us, but Mystique had stayed behind at Area 51 as one of the "wounded". She still had one more task to complete, because in all of the carnage we'd left, we still hadn't killed the Director. The Colonel had also escaped us somehow, but she was really the least of our worries.

Once she was stitched up, Angela went to the body bag and placed her hand on it. I sat next to her and put my hand over hers. "Darlin', you don't have to do this now."

"Yes, I do," she whispered, tears already spilling down her face. "I haven't seen her in over twenty-five years, Logan. I have to say goodbye."

I nodded and moved my hand, sliding my arm around her shoulders. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath before reaching for the zipper and opening the bag. She opened it up and my heart skipped a beat. She looked just like Angela, a perfect copy of her only looking much younger, no more than fifteen. Angela choked out a sob and laid her head down on her daughter's chest. "Oh gods, Emma, will you ever forgive me? I didn't know what they were doing to you, I swear! I loved you more than my own life, I would have died in your place if I'd known!" Her voice hitched and she cried out all the grief she'd never really released, because she'd never been able to lay her daughter to rest. A tear spilled down my own cheek as she wept, because I would never be able to do this for the daughter I'd had with her. Her body had been obliterated in the crash that killed her, along with Sam and Storm. It was a hard truth that I would have to accept someday, but now was not the time.

After about an hour, the pilot announced that he was on final approach to the cabin. I shook Angela softly, but she was still so wrapped up in her grief she paid me no attention. Oddly enough, it was the co-pilot that helped her here. "Angela, please, we're getting ready to land. You have to let her go now. I'll take care of her for you, I promise."

"No, I can't leave her, I just can't, please," she begged. "Just a little longer, please!"

"Listen, I know how hard this must be for you, but you have two other little girls here who will need you very soon and a baby on the way. I'll take your girl the rest of the way, okay? I'll make sure she gets home or I'll die trying."

Angela looked up, her eyes red and puffy from crying. "You swear, on your life? No one else will get their hands on her?"

He went to one knee and clasped her hand softly. "I swear if I don't get her home, you can kill me yourself."

"I want her cremated, you understand me? I don't want anyone getting even a tiny sample of her, you got that? Not a single hair! And I want her ashes saved for me."

"You have my word, Angela. On my life."

"Dress her in pink silk, it was her favorite color."

"I'll make sure of it."

Angela nodded and turned back to her daughter, her face crumpling again. She leaned over and kissed her softly on the forehead. "I love you Emma. I will always love you. Goodbye, my little one." She turned into me and I put my arms around her, then pulled her out of her seat and led her back to the tail end of the plane. Her tears soaked the front of the bloody shirt I still wore and I gave her what comfort I could.

A few minutes later, the jet landed in the clearing just outside the stand of trees that surround the cabin. Once it was settled, the pilot came back to join us. He pulled a couple large duffel bags out of one of the compartments and set them down at my feet. "Here's some fresh clothes for you two," he said. "I'm afraid it's all military issue, but at least it's clean. Bennington had us come up here a week ago and we cleaned and restocked everything. You could hold out here for about two months on what's in here. There's game aplenty should you need it, but there's enough frozen vegetables and meat in the freezer to last a while and canned food in the root cellar." He pulled a cell phone out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. "If you need anything, no matter how trivial, you just hit one on the speed dial and it'll connect directly to Bennington's personal cell. Even if you just want cigars or civilian clothes, okay?"

"Sure pal," I said and slipped it into my shirt pocket. "Thanks for everythin'."

"Just doing my job, Logan. This whole team's been waiting for months to extract you, we were just waiting for the word."

"How many people knew about this?"

"Just me, Grant and Randolph, the co-pilot, besides Bennington and Miss Imlay. We were handpicked for this mission."

"Why?"

His face grew hard and a coldness went through his eyes. "My brother was in the safe house in Des Moines all those years ago, when the Sentinel attacked. Grant here lost a sister and Randolph lost a twin in one of the labs. We want that bastard taken down, but we want the truth to come about him too. Grant volunteered for the hardest part, working with the son of a bitch. He hated seeing what they put you through, but he hated the thought of what would happen if this were to continue unchecked. Bennington chose us as soon as he found out about you guys being there, figuring you'd need a quick exit, Grant was to be your inside contact. He'd been working for months to get the evidence we need to get rid of this program once and for all."

"What's going to happen to all those operatives he made?" Angela whispered, finally pulling herself together a bit.

"Honestly, I don't know. The adamantium's killing most of them. As for the rest?" He shrugged. "I guess it depends on if they can be rehabilitated or not, get the conditioning reversed."

"Hey Branch, we gotta go!" The co-pilot, Randolph, called out. "We got another hard target extraction in two hours! We just got the call."

"Shit," he said under his breath. "Okay look, Grant will have to fill you in on everything else, all right? You take care of yourselves and these little girls. We'll come back for you whenever you want us to."

I nodded and helped Angela to her feet. Grant grabbed the duffels while Branch and Randolph carefully picked up the kids and carried them into the cabin. I breathed in the scent of it and all the horror of the past nine months began to fade. If ever Angela and I have a true home, this place was it. Dr. Lee gave the girls another once-over before handing me a large box full of vials and bottles of pills, everything we would need to keep them subdued until we knew if we'd be able to get through to them. I didn't know how long we'd stay here, probably just long enough to re-humanize ourselves, but I did know that we didn't stand a chance if Phoenix got her powers back to strength. He told me how often to dose her and in what quantity, that it could be injected or slipped into a drink if need be, since it was completely tasteless. The other vials and the pill bottles contained sedatives, painkillers and barbiturates, to be used in order from weakest to strongest as X-23 adapted to them. Her healing factor isn't quite as efficient as mine, but it's close enough that I knew we'd have to get her back to the mansion as soon as we could. We only had enough drugs to keep her calm for about three weeks, unless we could convince her that she'd been lied to about where she came from.

We said our final goodbyes to the men that had helped us so much and I realized I would miss them all. Dr. Lee I would see again when we got back to the school, but I didn't know about the others. I silently wished them luck as the jet shot into the sky, then turned and went back inside the cabin to regain the life I'd left behind.

* * *

**AN: **Sorry about the late update everyone, but i've been sick as all get out for over a week now and let me tell you, it SUCKS...and friends don't let friends update on NyQuil, or so my beta reader tells me, so i waited...but i thought it was kinda funny to post chapter 13 on Friday the 13th, so here it is...:) Special thanks to my whole beta team for being so awesome at what they do! Extra Special thanks to my readers for sticking with me and this saga...and Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were theNightEnchantress, Andromeda Jones and TnTornado...:) Miss Jones: Oddly enough, i saw Transformers that same day! Loved it:) Mr. Tornado: More on the blue bitch and co. later...just wait for it...:)

**Now, NyQuil or not, if i get even one brand new reviewer, i'll post a new chapter, even if it takes me four hours to do the final read through! So go ahead and click that little "go" button down there and say hello or something:)**


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

(Bobby)

It is so hard to believe everything that's happened over the past couple of weeks. First off, we find out that the Professor's been trying to get Magneto sprung from prison because of that damned army coming out of Weapon X. Then we find out he's had someone who's known everything that's happened to Logan and Angela since they left, because that Bennington guy has someone inside there. As if that wasn't enough, we also find out Mystique's out there and that Logan's actually working _with_ her on some plan to get rid of the guy in charge of Weapon X and get them the heck out of there. But I think the most shocking thing of all was Jubilee's uncle showing up on our doorstep out of the blue.

He'd been working at Weapon X for years, blackmailed by the Director into cooperating or else Jubilee would die. I don't know if anyone would have been able to pull that off or not, but it was enough of a threat to get the doctor to work with them, even if he did as much as could to be not very helpful at all. Jubilee was so happy to see him that she cried every time she saw him for a week. He was her only family, really, since her parents had turned her out at the age of fourteen when her mutation first manifested. Years later, after she'd become one of the "famous X-Men", they'd tried to weasel their way back into her life, but she wasn't having any of it. They'd made their feelings quite clear to her and she wasn't about to make it easy on them. But her Uncle Daniel had always supported her, given her money or food when she needed it, but he had suddenly disappeared just before Xavier found her living in a mall out in California. She'd been worried about him for years, but had given up hope that he was still alive a long time ago. Now here he was, living at the mansion and doing some massive research project with Hank that had something to do with Logan's healing factor. He says he hopes to have it finished before he dies, but at sixty-three years old he's in better shape than half the team and that's saying something.

But he also told us that Logan and Angela are free of that place, with two little girls to boot. One of them is apparently a clone of Dr. Grey and none of us know how to feel about that. Of course, she's only like twelve years old, so it's not like we'll have to worry about Scott. But if she's half as pretty as Dr. Grey was, it'll be weird for the rest of us to see the kids in the school hitting on her. But Dr. Lee said there's no guarantees that we'll be able to help her very much, because she was raised by the Weapon X people since birth and really believes that her whole purpose in life is to hurt other mutants. Because they taught her that mutants that don't work for the Director are all evil and need to be stopped before they overrun the planet. Sure, if we were all like Magneto that might be a problem, but we're not.

The other one doesn't even have a name, she's just called X-23 and she's apparently a clone of _Logan_. How the hell you clone a man and wind up with a girl is beyond me, but Hank explained that it's because all people start out female as a default, but a certain signal to the DNA changes that early on in pregnancy. He said that from what he understood of the old files that the Deadly Trio had brought back from all the bases they destroyed over the years that they'd been trying to force the clone to be male and they all failed. They let this one go and when they came up with a girl, they didn't worry about it too much. I feel really bad for her. How much must it suck to just be called X-23 your whole life, all seven years of it? I only hope she doesn't have too much of Logan's attitude or else they're going to have their hands full getting her back on track.

The last bit was the part where they hadn't actually planned on leaving this early. But the plan had changed when Angela found out she was pregnant! I don't blame any of them for getting out of there when they did, because I hate to think what they'd have done if they knew she was having a baby. They would have probably taken it away from her right after it was born and she'd never see it again. She's lost enough children for one normal lifetime, much less the really long life she's probably going to have. Losing another one in any way would probably kill even Angela.

But there's always bad news to go with good and this time was no exception. The Director had just lost his main base of operations to another incredibly bloody and brutal escape by two of his favorite guinea pigs. They had broken out twice now and it wouldn't go over well if any of the other people he had got wind of it, if their conditioning would allow them to even think such a thing was possible. Dr. Lee said that the conditioning is pretty extensive and might take years of telepathic therapy to reverse, but that some of them weren't going to be worth trying to save anyway because they were already dying. But he did give us a weapon we could use against them when they were finally let loose, some compound that suppresses the healing factor and makes them easier to kill. And that was the most important thing to know because we were going to need it.

Bennington called this morning and told us that the entire army was being assembled somewhere in the Yukon. It would only be a matter of time before they started their work and when they did, the X-Men would be the only ones with a chance to stop them.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Remy)

We get word today dat t'ings be moving much faster den we t'ink dey would. Logan an' Angela, dey got away an' dey are staying at de hideaway in Canada wit' a couple little ones dey save from dat terrible place. Dey say dey not ready t' come home jus' yet, from what a friend say when he show up at de mansion. But dis mean dat we be able t' go home soon, which make Remy very happy.

But we not telling _la petit belle_ about dis, because we not sure when we be able to go home. We only know it be soon, so we keep it t' ourselves for now, as much as we can wit' little Genevieve knowin' so much all de time. I t'ink maybe she already know all dis, but we jus' bein' on de safe side.

But de bad news be very bad indeed, since dat terrible army be makin' ready t' move. Remy not know when dat will be, or where dey will go first, but dis Cajun know he will have to be dere when dey do start. Too many lives, too many people be at risk an' Remy not be able t' live wit' himself if he not be dere t' help. My precious Marie feel de same way, so we already tell Sam an' Storm dat we go back early if we have to, but we not wanting to leave dem all alone. But it was little Genevieve who tell us dat we not have to worry for long, since she see herself wit' her _mère_ and _père _very soon. Remy hope she be right, for it worry me greatly dey be apart for so long.

But we can all feel it, like de whole world be waitin' for somet'ing t' happen, somet'ing dat will change everyt'ing. Remy be certain _la petit belle_ already know what dis terrible t'ing be, but she not saying what or when. Maybe it be so terrible she not know how t' tell us, but Remy don' t'ink so. Remy t'ink dat maybe it be terrible for someone here an' she just not wanting t' frighten us. But not knowin' is jus' as terrible, if you ask dis Cajun.

At least we will be home soon an' dat be de important part. Everyt'ing else work out itself.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_Ten months, three weeks, five days, two hours and forty-three minutes since mom and dad sent me away._

_It's almost time to go home! Mommy and Daddy will be going first, for a few days, because they have things they have to do before I can go too. Uncle Atlas said that Uncle Charles did something to their memories so that the bad men wouldn't come looking for me, but he wouldn't tell me what, only that Uncle Charles has to put their memories back the way they were before I can go home. I hope it doesn't take too long, because I have to tell you, I am very tired of waiting._

_It's spring again, did you know that? The snow is melting and there are birds around that I haven't seen in ages. Do you remember how I told you on my birthday that I'd see my parents again before the end of summer? I was right! It was just a feeling then, but now I know for sure that I was right. I asked Erin about it and she said that sometimes that can happen to people like us, that we just know when something is going to happen without seeing it. I don't care if there's a name for it or not, because it doesn't matter to me. I just knew we would be together before summer was over and now it looks like we'll be together before it starts! How cool is that?_

_But the bad army is getting ready to go, I can see them in my sleep and sometimes when I meditate. Erin says it's because I'm always thinking about my parents and that's where they are, but I don't know. She says if I wanted to see what the basketball scores were going to be or if it's going to rain the next day, I just have to think really hard about it when I'm meditating and I'll see it. I don't know how she thinks I can clear my head and think about stuff at the same time, but she says it'll get easier as I get better. Right now, I'm pretty good at clearing my head and being still and just letting the visions come._

_I've decided on a code name for when I get to be an X-Man, because I've decided that's what I want to be when I grow up. Aunt Rogue was teaching me about ancient Greece and there was this lady called the Oracle at Delphi who would have visions for people to tell them the future. So that's gonna be my code name, Delphi. Do you like it? I sure do. It was either that or Cassandra, but no one ever believed her and I want people to know that I'm not just making things up._

_Aunt Rogue and Aunt 'Roro both say I'm gonna be way ahead of everyone when I get back to school, so I might get to skip a grade in some of my classes. I think that would be really cool and I might even be able to be a real X-Man before all my friends. But I'm not gonna worry about it too much, because I know Daddy is gonna hate it if I become an X-Man. But I don't think it'll be too bad, because I think I got something from him and Mommy. I skinned my knee the other day and before I could even get to the house, it went away. So if I have the healing thing like they do, I'll be able to learn how to fight and I won't have to worry about getting hurt too bad cuz it'll just heal up. Then Daddy won't be able to be mad at me for being an X-Man, because I won't be able to get hurt either._

_Oh, I can hardly wait to go home! It'll be so good to see Wendy and everyone again! But especially to be with Mommy and Daddy! I'm never gonna let them leave me like this ever again!_

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Angela)

None of us really had the energy for more than a quick bath before collapsing, so we gave the girls another sedative and installed them in the spare room before doing so. We let Grant – whose full name is David Grant III – go first, then Logan and I shared a shower. We offered to sleep on the sofa in watch shifts, but he shook his head. "No, the two of you spent enough time without any real privacy, you deserve the time together. I'll sleep out here until we know what we're doing next, I don't mind." We were too tired to argue, so we collapsed in our room and were asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillows.

When we awoke, we were both amazed to discover we'd slept the rest of the day and the night away. Morning sun was slanting through the windows and the smell of eggs, bacon and coffee filled the cabin. My stomach gave a loud growl and Logan laughed. "Darlin', I think the baby's makin' his presence known."

"Sounds like," I replied and smiled, my first genuine smile since this whole ordeal began. "Come on, let's get some of that before there's nothing left."

We pulled on some clean clothing and I slowly opened the door. David was out there with the girls, both of which were eating slowly. All eyes turned to us and the little one, X-23, scowled and turned back to her plate while Phoenix simply stared. I took a deep breath and steeled myself for an eventful few weeks, starting now. "Good morning everyone," I said.

"Good morning Angela," David replied, getting plates down for us. "I guessed this herbal tea is for you, so I made you a pot. Logan, would you like some coffee?"

"Yeah, black as you can get it," he said and slipped past me. He loaded up a plate and sat down next to his little clone.

Neither one of us had gotten a really good look at her until we were on the plane out here and at that point she'd been unconscious. Now that she was awake, her resemblance to Logan was nothing short of startling. Her short black hair was unruly and had the same distinctive tufts at the sides, her bright green eyes full of suspicion. Even the scowl she gave him was identical. "You're Wolv'rine, ain't you?" She asked.

"Yeah, I am kid, what of it?"

"You let those people take me away. You both did." Her scowl deepened, her mouth clenched in a thin line. I loaded up a plate and took it with my mug of tea to the remaining seat at the table.

"It ain't that simple kid. I know what they told ya, but they lied to ya."

"I don't believe you."

"An' why's that? Or did they leave out the part where me an' Hellcat weren't even there when you were born? Did they tell ya that?"

Her eyes narrowed further. "So where were you?" Damn. Seven years old and already she was an expert interrogator.

"Livin' somewhere else, where we're gonna take the both o' ya if we can get ya both to understand some things."

"I understand all I need to," Phoenix piped in. "I know you gave me something to make my telepathy not work. And David here already told me that if I try using my telekinesis, he's gonna keep me drugged up til we leave here. So that means you guys are no better than my father."

That brought me up short. "Your father?"

She turned to me and I could have sworn I saw her eyes blaze for a moment, as though filling with flame. "Yeah, my father. Malcolm Colcord. I think you called him 'The Director'."

"Listen to me," I said, leaning over. "That man isn't your father…"

"Oh, I know," she interrupted. "I don't have a real mother or father. I'm a clone." I sat back, astonished and she just rolled her eyes. "I'm a telepath, remember? Like they could keep anything from me. I know I'm a clone of someone named Jean Grey. But he raised me, so that makes him my father." She turned to X-23 and smiled coldly. "You're a clone too, ya know. Wolverine's right about that, they did lie to you."

The smaller girl sneered, a growl rumbling from deep in her chest and she lunged, but Logan stopped her, pinning her to her chair with an arm across her chest. "Ya don't wanna do that, kid," he warned, shooting a glare at Phoenix who sat there laughing. "An' you stop laughin'. None o' this is funny."

"Oh, yeah it is," she said with a smirk. "What do you think's gonna happen here Wolverine? That I'm going to be so grateful to you for 'saving' me from those people?" She shoved her chair back and her eyes blazed. "I didn't want to _be_ saved, okay? I was happy!"

"What did he tell ya, Phoenix? That the only good mutant is a mutant he controlled? That mutants ain't really people? C'mon, little girl, don't hold back now! Lay it all out for me, tell me what it is he wanted from you!"

"I don't have to tell you _anything_!" She shouted and dashed back to the bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

X-23 continued to struggle against him, scratching and biting at his arm, which he ignored as he turned back to her. "You 'bout done kid?"

"Don't call me kid!"

"Then what do we call ya? Do ya even have a name?"

"X-23! That's my name!"

"That ain't a name, it's a code an' do ya wanna know what it means?"

"An' what kinda name is 'Wolv'rine' then, huh?"

"That ain't my name, it's my code."

"So what's your name then?"

"You first." She scowled at him, then the fight went out of her completely and she sat there looking defeated. "Ya don't even have one, do ya? They never gave ya a regular name 'cause they didn't know if you'd live this long."

"They said I didn't get a name 'cause I didn't need one. They said you guys didn't care enough to give me one." Her brow furrowed in confusion and she looked at me. "Did that other girl tell me the truth? You guys ain't really my mom and dad?"

"Well, I'm not your mom, that's for sure," I said softly. "And he's not exactly your father."

"So where do I come from? And what's a clone anyway?"

I didn't want to get into a huge scientific discussion with a seven-year-old, but I had to tell her something. "It's a copy of a living thing, like a person."

Her eyes got wide and she looked between us. "So who am I a copy of?"

"Me," Logan said and sighed. "They tried a bunch o' times to copy me an' they had problems makin' it come out a boy. So they let the last one do whatever it wanted to do an' that's you."

"X-23," she breathed and slumped in the chair. "Am I number twenty-three? All the ones before me are what, dead?"

"Yeah, they are." He let the little girl go, but she didn't bolt like I thought she would. "It's really hard to explain, there's a lot o' scientific mumbo-jumbo ya wouldn't understand, but they did too much fiddlin' 'round to the babies an' it made 'em too weak to live for long."

"Except for me. I'm still here." She narrowed her eyes again, only this time in concentration. "They kept testin' me, ya know? An' one time, I heard one of the doctors say somethin' about puttin' metal on my bones when I grew up." She looked at me, then back at Logan. "They told me you let them have me, 'cause I was a freak an' you didn't love me."

He leaned forward and looked her right in the eyes. "Listen to me, kid, an' believe me when I say this. The only reason we were there this time was to get you an' get Phoenix outta there." Ok, a minor lie but she didn't need to know we were also planning to kill the Director. "We knew 'bout you two an' couldn't stand the thought of 'em hurtin' you like they hurt us."

"They told me you were just regular people, but you're not are you? If I'm your copy, then you're just like me."

"That's right, I am. An' they put metal on my bones, 'cause they knew it wouldn't hurt me for long."

"So who is my mom then? Who is she?"

"We don't know kid. All we had was her code name an' we never met her the whole time we were there."

Her chin started quivering and a tear spilled down her cheek. "So I'm all alone? I got nobody?"

I leaned over and took her hand. "No, sweetie, that's not true. We might not be your mother and father, but we could be, if you want us to. You have us."

"How do I know you're not tryin' to trick me? How do I know this is true if the other stuff wasn't true?"

"That's up to you, to trust us or not. We're going to be here for a while, so you can make up your mind. I know you don't believe us and you have no reason to. But we'll prove it to you, any way we can." I looked up at Logan. "Right?"

He nodded. "Right. We'll give you a chance if you give us one."

"I'll try," she said and sniffled, rubbing her eyes. "I'm tired, can I go back to bed?"

"Sure kid." She got up from the table and went back to the bedroom, closing the door more gently than Phoenix did. Logan sat back in his chair and sighed. "This is gonna be a long coupla weeks, you know that?"

"Yes, I do. But we have to do this. We can't take them back the way they are." I sipped my tea. "X-23 is young enough that we have a chance, but Phoenix?"

"Yeah, I know darlin'. That's gonna be one tough kid to crack."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I could have accused Logan of being psychic after that first day. "Tough" didn't even begin to describe Phoenix. We knew that it was going to be harder to convince her, since we had to keep her telepathy suppressed. Add to that the fact that she was almost thirteen years old and already a thousand times more angsty than any Goth kid four years older and we definitely had our work cut out for us.

It was early March, but the cabin is far enough north that it was still seriously winter up there. X-23 loved it, having never been allowed to play in the snow before. I don't know where they'd kept her before having her transferred to Area 51, but it must not have had much in the way of seasons. On our third day up there, it snowed and she sat at the window watching it fall for hours. When it stopped, she asked if she could go outside and we reluctantly agreed. Logan went out with her and taught her the joys of such things as building snowmen and his personal favorite, the snowball fight. By the end of the first hour, she was laughing just like any other little girl and it seemed like there was hope for her yet.

Of course, she was still prone to bouts of bitterness and outright hostility. Weapon X had conditioned her from birth to believe no one cared about her, least of all her parents. I don't think she quite believed we weren't her real mother and father who gave her up willingly to those monsters simply because she was a mutant. It was actually David who helped bring her around, because he had been one of the soldiers assigned to guard her for those last few weeks at Area 51. Oh, they gave her plenty of toys and games to play with, but they never gave her anything approaching love or even affection. Any doctor will tell you that infants who are not touched and handled will actually die, so they'd done that much. But no one ever made an emotional connection with her and that was the reason behind her hostility. She had all the same super-intense feelings as any other little girl her age and had never been able to act on them. From what we were able to glean in our time at the cabin, she was generally praised for negative emotions like anger and punished when she exhibited positive responses, such as being happy. David told us the whole story over the course of many late nights, that she'd been brought to Area 51 because they were going to experiment with a partial bonding process that would cover her bones in certain areas, allowing them to continue to grow normally until they could do a complete bonding on her. The testing she'd mentioned that first morning had been to see how effective her healing factor was, so they'd know what her chances of survival were. Had we not accelerated our plans to get out of there, we would have been too late to save her from that.

Phoenix avoided us at all costs, to the point of taking her plates to the bedroom to eat and only being in the same room as us long enough to cross from the bedroom to the bath and back again. There were a few nights where we could hear her talking to David long after we'd gone to bed and he was trying his best to explain to her how wrong everything was that had happened to her. After a while, she developed a "victim mentality", that maybe these things had happened because she deserved them, or because she made them happen somehow. Deep down, I thought she was just telling us what we wanted to hear and I had trouble trusting this development.

But David thought she was being sincere. There was a lot we didn't know about the guy and it wasn't until near the end of our second week up there that we learned everything. We knew he worked for Bennington, which made us trust him outright, but we didn't know much about him as a person. He finally told us everything one snowy night after the girls had gone to bed.

He and Logan were sharing a bottle of whisky while I sipped yet another cup of herbal tea. He told us how he'd lost his sister in the Des Moines attack and how he'd launched his own investigation into the events surrounding it, not buying the official story of a "gas explosion" or the slightly less official story of "mutant attack". He managed to find one person in the whole town willing to tell him what she saw that night and what he learned from her didn't add up.

"I mean come on! A giant robot shooting lasers?" He shook his head and polished off his whisky. "Sounded like something out of a science fiction movie to me. But she swore that's what she saw and the next thing she knew, she was waking up on the floor of her bedroom, every window in the house shattered. She said she was lucky to be alive, because everything within the blast radius was obliterated and her house was just outside that area."

"Yeah, I was there," Logan said and swallowed hard. "Nothin' but pieces left, some no bigger than the palm o' my hand. We looked for survivors, but…" He tossed back his whisky and reached for the bottle. "I've done some terrible things in my day, some of 'em recently, but I ain't never seen anythin' like that before."

"Well, I went back after things calmed down, tried to see if there was anything left and I found this." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a computer chip. "It was buried in a flower bed about a block outside the blast area. I did the only thing I could think to do and tried tracking where it came from. See this?" He handed it to me, indicating a partial serial number. "I tried looking it up on the internet, see if I could find out where it was made. Three days later, Bennington showed up on my doorstep." I handed the chip back and he put it away. "He said I was very close to getting into a lot of trouble, that the people who made that chip would not hesitate to have me eliminated to get it back." He poured himself another glass and took a sip. "I was stunned! It looked just like a useless computer component, but he said it was much more than that."

"It came out of the Sentinel that destroyed that house, probably part of its main system array," I said, nodding in understanding. "He knew the Director would send a couple operatives to kill you and get it back."

"Exactly. So he offered me an alternative. He would make me disappear, make it so it looked like I never existed in the first place in exchange for my assistance in bringing the program down."

"What I don't understand is how Bennington hasn't been able to do that in the first place. He seems to have the connections, the authority…why didn't he just go in and kill the Director himself?"

"Colcord isn't the original Director. That guy died thirty years ago, from a stroke. Colcord took over because he'd been working with the original Director for ages, and twisted the project to suit his own ends. It wasn't always the monster it's become."

"Yeah, we know," Logan said. "Bennington gave us a bunch o' files 'bout twelve years ago with all the info we'd ever need to take the project down."

"So you know that it was originally intended to help protect the United States from foreign enemies, not mutants. And the original Director would have never approved the adamantium bonding process. But Colcord has his own agenda, the extermination of mutantkind, root and branch. It's personal for him because his father was killed by a drunk driver who was only incidentally a mutant."

"So why would he surround himself with so many o' us if he hates us so much?"

"Because you have to fight fire with fire. Some mutants have awesome power, things normal people can hardly imagine. How do you defeat a man who can kill you with a thought? Or a woman who can render herself invisible and kill you on a street corner in broad daylight? He knew he needed people – mutants – who would be able to survive anything and that's where you guys came in."

"So how did Stryker figure into all o' this?"

"William Stryker's son was a mutant, who could project illusionary scenarios directly into the mind. He could make you believe you were sitting on a beach in Fiji when you were really in the living room watching a sitcom. Or he could make you believe you were raping a five-year-old boy in front of a live audience when you were really on a beach in Fiji. When his boy first manifested his mutation, Stryker took him to Charles Xavier for a 'cure', but when that wasn't forthcoming he pulled him out of the school and started trying to solve the problem for himself. Being a military man, he had some pretty extensive resources at his disposal. He started experimenting on any telepaths he could get his hands on, but then he was approached by Colcord."

"So how does any of this apply to Logan and me?" I asked, refreshing my tea from the pot on the coffee table.

"Colcord had some ideas about how to use Stryker's son to benefit mankind, but he wanted something in return. Stryker agreed and had his son put into a forced coma until he helped Colcord perfect the adamantium bonding process. A doctor named Abraham Cornelius solved the marrow problem using nanotech valves he invented and Stryker provided his expertise with metallurgy, coming up with a way to smelt the adamantium in a pure liquid form. There had always been a problem with keeping it molten long enough to be of use and Stryker solved it."

"How?"

Grant shrugged. "I have no idea and I don't care to know. What I do know is that once the process was complete, he started trying to bond it to any mutants he could get his hands on. It wasn't until they caught one that they code named 'Coyote' that they solved the death rate amongst the subjects."

"Feral mutants," Logan said. "He needed feral mutants who could repair the damage."

"Exactly. Coyote's healing factor wasn't nearly as good as yours, Logan. Only one subject has a healing factor on par and he's been missing since Liberty Island. But once he made that discovery, Stryker made it his personal mission to bring in every feral mutant he could find. But it didn't escape anyone's notice that he seemed disappointed every time they brought in a man."

"He was lookin' for me, wasn't he?"

"Yes, he was. Seems that you'd actually worked under him, _way_ under him during Vietnam. You'd already been alive God only knows how long by then and you'd been living in the States for some time. You joined the army, got sent over with the rest of the newbies back then and by the end of your first tour, you got noticed."

"Lemme guess, every unit I was assigned to died to a man 'cept for me."

"Pretty much. You signed on for two more tours, but you vanished without a trace halfway through the last one. Stryker questioned the survivors from your units and found out you'd been shot countless times, stabbed at least a dozen times and had supposedly stepped on a mine at least once, yet you were still walking and talking until your disappearance. The official story is that you were caught in a napalm drop, which explained the lack of a body, but for a man with luck like yours, he didn't believe it."

"He knew, even back then he knew I was a mutant."

"Yes. It wasn't until years later, after you had joined the Canadian Special Forces that he caught wind of you again. He found out about a mission you were going on to somewhere in Korea and leaked some of the details to their military, to ensure that it would be a disaster. You were kicked out of the force, got into some arms smuggling and the Weapon X guys grabbed you on your way out of a bar one night. Word is you were hunting someone down that had screwed you on an arms deal."

"No, I'd already gotten that asshole. Killed him in broad daylight middle o' Montreal. I was on my way to the Yukon to hide out til everyone figured I was dead or somethin'."

"Well, I don't know the details of how they found you, but they did. By then, they'd perfected the bonding process and the program was officially named 'Weapon X' because you were going to be the perfect killing machine, the tenth person they did the process to."

"But they didn't count on me goin' berserk on 'em."

"No. They thought they had you pretty well softened up by then, your mind had been worked over so badly it was like there was nothing left of you. Stryker tried to terminate the project after your escape, figuring it was too risky to try again on anyone else, but Colcord wouldn't hear of it. He found more feral mutants, bonded the lot of them and had more success. After that, they concentrated on Stryker's son for a while, finally resorting to lobotomizing him to keep him from using his power. But they discovered that his cerebral-spinal fluid could act as a mind-controlling agent and they first tested that theory on Deathstrike."

"That's the woman he killed at Alkali Lake the second time, right?" I asked, setting aside my cup.

"Yes. But with the loss of Stryker and his son, Colcord had to go back to the old methods of controlling people, with telepathic conditioning and regular tortures." He chuckled bitterly. "You know how he controls his telepaths? They all have implants in their brains, a tiny explosive that he can set off with the touch of a single button. If they don't do what he wants them to do, he'll kill them."

"Jesus Christ," Logan breathed. "An' I thought the one I had in my head was bad."

"Not even close, though you were the only one who ever needed one of those. The rest were either more sadistic or easier to condition, because they almost skipped to that damn tank with a smile on their faces."

"How do you know all of this?" I asked. "You weren't there for most of it."

"Bennington. He's got copies of every scrap of paper ever produced by that program. He's had people inside every government agency for centuries, feeding him the info he needs. Mostly, he uses low-level people and civilians – people who do transcription or data entry – because no one ever pays attention to them. It's very simple for them to make copies and smuggle them out, because it's believed they don't have the clearance to know anything important."

"So how do you figure into all of this, besides the Des Moines incident?"

"Because I'm a mutant too. I'm a telepath, but not a very strong one. Xavier could eat my brain for breakfast, I'm sure. But mostly I'm an empath. I can feel what other people feel and if I try hard enough, I can make them feel what I want them to."

"Is that why we trusted you from the start?" Logan asked, a touch of menace in his voice. "You makin' us want to trust you, like you?"

Grant shook his head. "No, it isn't and I know you can tell when people are lying. No, I don't use my power that way unless I have no other choice. I can use it as a weapon if I have to, but I don't like to. But that's why I think Phoenix is beginning to come around a little. With her telepathy suppressed, she can't tell when I'm using my power on her. So yeah, I'm nudging her a little, making her a little more receptive to believing us. But I am not and I will not manipulate her more than that. It's not right. The choice to trust us will be hers alone, but you both have to know that I do have orders regarding her."

"What? From who?"

"Bennington. If we can't convince her that we're not the enemy, I'm to remand her to BCI custody, where she'll be kept in a forced coma for the rest of her life."

My stomach lurched at the thought of that. "David, we can't let you do that." I said.

"And we can't let her run amok with the kind of power she has! Logan, you knew Jean Grey. Did you know she was a class five mutant?" We both nodded; the Professor had told us that much. "Then you know what that means. Her powers will have no limits. She'll be able to communicate telepathically with anyone, anywhere. And her telekinesis? Once that fully develops, she'll be able to take things apart at the molecular level. She's the psychic equivalent of a nuclear bomb without the failsafes. She'll be too dangerous to just let go, so my orders are to bring her in." He sighed and tossed back the last of his drink. "Just be glad I wasn't told to put a bullet in her head, okay? It was brought up as an option, but I refused and Bennington agreed. But if that had been my orders, I'd do it without hesitation."

"You know ya wouldn't live to see another day if ya did that, right?" Logan said.

"I know. But my first duty is to protect this country and the Constitution against all threats and right now, _she's_ a threat. I don't like it any more than you do, but it has to be done." He put his glass down on the table and scrubbed his face. "Look, I'm not going to argue the ethics of this decision with you. Maybe if we can find another class five telepath someday, he can work with her while she's out and it won't be a permanent sentence. In the meantime, do what you can to help her and maybe it won't come to that at all."

"I hope you're right, Grant, 'cause I ain't gonna let ya have her, not as long as I have breath in my body."

He nodded. "I know, believe me. Look, it's late, why don't we all sleep on this and we'll worry about it if the time comes to make that decision, all right?" We agreed that was a fine idea and went to our room.

Sleep still eluded me a few hours later, even as Logan dreamed beside me. I didn't know what to make of everything David had told us, only that I agreed with Logan. No matter what, I wasn't going to let Bennington have that little girl. There had to be some way to get through to her, even if I didn't have a clue what that could be.

* * *

**AN:** Bleah...still sick, still on so much cold medicine i can hardly think straight, so i'm gonna skimp on my author's notes today...again, i say bleah...:/ But i do sincerely thank everyone for reading and/or reviewing...:) 


	15. Chapter 15

**AN: **My sincere apologies for the severe lateness of this update...more info at the end of the chapter...

* * *

Chapter 15

(Professor X)

I have had Buzz and Sage carefully monitoring the mustering point for the Director's army closely these past few weeks. The operatives arrive in groups of ten or twenty and are immediately taken to an underground facility. I have been personally monitoring Mystique, who has "recovered" from the "injuries" she sustained at Area 51 and has been transferred to the Yukon facility. However, she reports that she has yet been unable to get close enough to the Director to eliminate him. As distasteful as assassination is at the best of times, I do tend to agree with Logan that sometimes a person must do a terrible thing to prevent something even worse. My only wish is that it would have never come to this.

Mr. Bennington has provided me with the information she needs to free Erik and to get him here to the mansion safely. I have been unable to communicate with him at all, which leads me to believe his captors have used his knowledge of blocking telepathy to prevent just that occurrence. I have instructed Mystique to inform me the moment she has him so I may do so. I do not trust Erik as I once did; I fear I will never trust him that way again. I am saddened that my old friend has come to this, but I am a pragmatic man and I will do whatever I must to ensure the safety and security of mutants everywhere. Once upon a time, I believed that peace could be achieved through less ugly means, but times change. I still do not share Erik's belief that mutants should take their place as the superior race, enslaving those not blessed with our abilities and I will never share that belief. We must learn to coexist with our human brethren or we are no better than the madman mustering his army in the frozen wastes of the Yukon.

Bennington has also ensured that Mystique will be transferred to Erik's facility within the week. Three days after that, they will escape and begin working their way here. He will meet with them personally to explain things to them, not the least of which is the fact that their continued survival depends wholly on their complete cooperation with this project. Again, I do not like doing things in this manner, but knowing that army is out there leaves me with few choices. Like it or not, Erik is our last, best hope to stop them.

Scott has informed me that he will remain with the team and continue to lead them. He has been driving them harder than Logan or Angela ever did, having Buzz create scenarios far beyond anything we'd ever used before. I know the driving force behind this is his own brush with death, which seems to have opened his eyes to the harsh reality before us. Although the war is never over, we had all thought it was in its final death throes. What a terrible way to discover we were wrong.

I do not know when Logan and Angela will return to us. They have yet to contact me and I do not know if it is out of fear that I will no longer respect them because of their recent activities or if it's something else entirely. I do know they are safe in their cabin, with the two children they wanted to save and another mutant who had assisted them while they were still at Area 51. But until they contact me, I will not interfere with whatever it is they are doing up there.

I was surprised when a jet landed on our lawn the day they escaped, carrying with them the body of Angela's first daughter. As per her wishes, the girl was dressed in pink silk then cremated. The ashes sit on the mantle in my office, awaiting her return, though I did take the liberty of erecting a monument in the garden with the others who have fallen. Kitty goes out there every other day and places pink roses on it, perhaps as a way of making sure the girl knows she was loved, even if her own mother is not there to perform the task herself. Some of Angela's other students have gone out there as well, though it is Totem who can be found there the most often. It is his own way of keeping his promise to Angela.

I do hope that the two of them will return soon, as they will be needed more than ever before. I do not know about the children they will have with them, especially Phoenix. From the little I have gleaned from her mind using Cerebro, she has little reason to trust either of them, much less any of us. I am reluctant to use my own powers to force the issue, but if it comes to it I may have to. Because the alternative is almost as horrifying as doing nothing, almost as terrible as that which was done to those under the Director's control. To leave the girl alive, yet not allowed to live is something I find intolerable. I do hope that the two of them will be able to get through to her.

But for now, life goes on. School continues, another class is poised to graduate and the X-Men continue their mission to use their powers to help people. I hope, when the time comes, it will be enough to let the people remember that not all mutants wish to harm them.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Rogue)

Well, Logan and Angela are free, but they still haven't gone home. I don't know what they're doing or how long it will take, but I hope they finish soon, for Evie's sake. She says that it'll be soon, that we'll all be going home before summer. But it's already April and there's not a lot of time left if she's right. Of course, part of her vision shows the X-Men fighting that awful army and I have a feeling not everyone will come out of that fight okay. I don't know who's gonna make it and who isn't, and Evie's not telling. She just says that everything works out in the end. I hope she's right.

I have to keep my hair colored these days, since I was recognized not that long ago. I did it all my natural color at first, but I hated it. So I thought I'd take a page out of Angela's book and color my stripes in fun shades. Right now, they're bright blue, but I think I'm going to go back to hot pink. Remy says it doesn't matter what I do, I could shave my head and he'd still think I was perfect. I simply can't put into words how much I love him.

I would marry him, you know, if he'd ask. But I think he might be waiting until all of this is over and Logan can be there to give me away. He'd want to give me a real wedding, like the one Sam and Storm had, something done in true Southern style. When I was little, I always imagined I'd get married in a rose garden, standing in a gazebo, wearing a dress with a ten-foot train and pink roses in my bouquet. My husband would be wearing all white and there would be garlands of ivy and lily-of-the-valley all around us. I would have four flower girls, two to sprinkle pink rose petals at my feet and two to carry the train, with a dozen bridesmaids, all of them in pink. As soon as the ceremony's over, we would rush to a waiting carriage, drawn by matching white horses and I would toss my bouquet as we rode off to our honeymoon.

I'm a lot older now and even if some of that has changed, I still want the ivy and the ten-foot train. I still want to ride off in a carriage and leave the reception for when we get back. But most of all, I want to be able to do all of this in a world where a mutant army isn't waiting to sweep across the face of the planet and destroy everything in its path. I want to do it in a world where giant Sentinels won't swoop out of the sky and lay waste to everything in front of them. I want to do it in a world where our children won't have to worry about being persecuted or killed just because of who we are or who they are.

I'm a mutant. For a long time, I hated it. I hated that I couldn't touch people, couldn't get close to anyone because I could kill them without meaning to. I hated myself and I hated my powers. But Logan helped me because he was never afraid of my power, even when he admitted it was the closest to death he'd ever been. He helped me because he took care of me when I didn't think anyone else could. For a long time I thought I was in love with him, but it wasn't him specifically that I loved, but that fact that he wasn't afraid to touch me. He became like a father to me and I will love him forever for everything he's done for me.

But nothing compares to how I love Remy. Maybe some of it's because I can touch him and not hurt him, but that doesn't explain how I feel even when we're not touching. It doesn't explain how my heart skips a beat when he smiles at me or how the sound of his voice makes me shiver. I think this must be how Logan feels about Angela.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_Eleven months, one day, fifteen hours and twelve minutes since mom and dad sent me away._

_I haven't told anyone, but we'll be home by the end of the month. I want it to be a surprise! And even though stuff isn't going to be really great right away, it'll all work out in the end._

_The X-Men are going to fight that army and they're going to win. Some of them are going to get hurt, but I can't see if any of them are dead. Sometimes I have visions about stuff that happens after and sometimes everyone is in them, but sometimes there are people missing and I know it's because they died fighting the army. In those, everyone is very sad, but the people who aren't there change every time. Erin says it's because battles are really messy and all kinds of stuff can change from second to second. So even if I see the X-Men winning and that's the truth, the ones who make it through can change because of stuff they decide to do while the battle is going on._

_But one thing I did see that I don't want to tell anyone is Uncle Charles. I think it happens way later, like years and years from now, but I saw him really sick, laying in a bed and dying. He hasn't told anyone except Uncle Hank, but he's got something wrong with his brain. There's little things in there that keep bleeding and there's nothing they can do to stop it, because it has to do with his telepathy. The only way to keep him from dying is if he never uses his telepathy ever again, but Uncle Charles says he can't do that. He says that he needs to use his power to help people and if he saves even one more person and it kills him, then it's worth it because he knows he did good while he was alive. So Uncle Hank's giving him medicine so his head doesn't hurt all the time, but they both know he's only going to get sicker instead of better._

_It's not fair! Why should someone like Uncle Charles have to be sick and dying when the Bad Man is still alive? Why can't the world get rid of all the bad people and let the good ones live and keep doing good things? I promise, Diary, that when I grow up, I'm going to always do good things for as long as I'm alive. I will never use my powers to hurt people unless they really, really deserve it. I promise that I will help everyone in the whole world understand that we have to get along. Because if we don't understand that, more bad men will come and keep hurting people and I know that just isn't right. I promise…_

"Evie? Are you busy?"

"Just writing in my diary."

"Can you put it down for a minute, sugar? There's a message for you from the school."

"Okay."

_Dear Diary, Part two,_

_Eleven months, one day, sixteen hours and four minutes since mom and dad sent me away._

_Guess what! We're going home in three days! I get to see Mommy and Daddy again!_

_But before I forget, let me finish. Where was I? Oh yeah._

_I promise that someday, I will do my part to change the world, because Uncle Charles isn't going to be able to. Someone needs to pick up where he leaves off and I promise, that will be me._

_Mommy and Daddy will be so proud of me!_

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Logan)

By the end of the third week, little X-23 was completely devoted to me. She still didn't seem to be a hundred percent sure about Angela, but she followed me around like a puppy every minute she was awake. I finally decided calling her "kid" wasn't going to do and I wanted to give her a name. So I talked it over with Angela one night after they'd gone to bed.

"It's not going to be easy to get her to accept a name, you know," she said, snuggling into my shoulder. "She's seven years old."

"I know darlin'. But we can't call her 'kid' or 'X' all the time. She deserves a real name, damn it, and it's high time she gets one."

We debated for a couple hours, but finally settled on "Laura Grace". But it didn't seem fair to leave Phoenix out of this, pretty though her code name may be, so we debated that as well and came up with "Rachel Anne". Of course, this spawned a debate about what to name the baby she was carrying. We both still liked "Connor James" if it was a boy, but a girl's name proved to be more difficult. After what felt like an eternity, we agreed on "Brianna Katherine". Satisfied with our decisions, we drifted off to sleep.

The next day, I took both girls out to play in the snow. I was sick and tired of Phoenix holing herself up in that room and it was high time she integrated into our lives. Once outside, I went to the group of snowmen that X-23 and I had been working on and started on another. The little one trotted over to give me a hand and that's when I brought up wanting to name her.

"Hey kid, me an' Angela were talkin' last night an' well…we thought you need a real name."

"I never had a real name," she said a little sadly. "I don't wanna be called X-23 forever."

"Well, what do you think of Laura?"

She thought about it for a minute, then smiled. "That's pretty. What would my last name be?"

Oh, there was something we hadn't discussed. But I had an idea and I hoped she liked it and that Angela would be okay with it. "How 'bout my name? Logan."

She looked up at me, obviously surprised. "Really? You'd let me have your name, even if I'm not your real daughter?"

I shrugged. "Why not? You're as much a part o' me as any child I've ever had. It's the least I could do." She surprised _me_ then when she threw herself into my arms and hugged me, the first physical contact she'd initiated since we got here. I wrapped my arms around her and swallowed the lump that formed in my throat. Having this little girl in my arms made me think of the one I really wanted there, my own daughter, my Evie. But I didn't want to hurt this little one that I knew I had to take care of, because she literally had no one else in the whole world. She'd never take the place of my own little girl, but I had enough room in my heart for this one too.

I heard the other kid mumbling across the yard and I released Laura. "Ya got somethin' ya wanna say, kid?" I asked.

"No," she said quietly, shuffling her feet.

"Sure 'bout that?"

She looked down and shuffled the snow around a bit more. "You won't care anyway. You won't believe me. You hate me."

I whispered to Laura to keep working on the snowmen and crossed over to Phoenix. "What makes ya think I hate you?"

"Don't be stupid, Wolverine. I read your mind, remember? I know you do."

"Listen kid, I don't hate ya. I hate what they did to us, what they made you do an' what you did to me an' my wife. But none o' that's your fault. Did it ever occur to you that if they lied to her," I jerked my head towards Laura, "that they might've lied to you too?"

"I'm a telepath! You can't lie to me, I know!"

"Ah, but you weren't always a telepath, were ya? Before your powers started, you were just a regular little kid. An' maybe Colcord believes that crap an' maybe he made sure that all the people who took care o' you thought the same things, but what did ya see when ya read our minds, hm?"

She looked down, chewing on her lip and continuing to shuffle in the snow. "I saw…I saw that mansion, okay? I saw you were happy there and that you were helping people, regular people. I saw everything you've ever done. And everything they did to you."

"So what, did you think it was all an illusion? That I made the whole thing up to send to ya on purpose?"

"I don't know." She looked at me and for a second, her eyes seemed to flicker, like flames. "You have a hole in your mind, did you know that?"

Now that was a strange thing to say. "I have a what?"

"A hole, in your mind. It's like a black spot in the back that I can't get through no matter how hard I try." She cocked her head and squinted at me. "It's like someone hid something back there, something they didn't want you to know. Or maybe they didn't want me to know. But it's there."

I honestly had no idea what this kid was talking about, but I wasn't about to lose the only chance I might have to get her talking to me. I probed my own memory, searching for gaps or things that felt false or just didn't make sense, but there was nothing. "What do you think it is?"

"I dunno. They told me back at the base that it was your feral side, the Wolverine part of you, and that I couldn't get in there if I wanted to."

"Does anyone else have one?"

She nodded. "Yeah, your wife. And a couple of the other people I scanned, but they all had their memories wiped by other telepaths."

This was really starting to freak me out. Who could have done this to us? A better question was why? "Well, maybe that's what it is then, 'cause I can tell ya right now I used to have amnesia, but it went away."

She shrugged and looked back down. "Anyway, I think it has stuff in it that someone wanted me to see, things that aren't real because the truth would have been terrible."

"That still don't explain why ya think I hate you."

"Because of who they made me from. You loved her almost as much as you love your wife, but when you look at me you don't see her, you see this thing they made that can never be her."

I let out a long breath and looked away. What she said was so close to the truth, I wondered if the drugs to suppress her telepathy were beginning to wear off. What worried me even more was the thought that Angela knew this, but I didn't have time to worry about that. "You ain't wrong about that, kid. I did love Jean, but she didn't love me, not the way I wanted her to. An' it didn't matter anyway, 'cause I found the woman who truly loves me. But that ain't got nothin' to do with you, all right? An' I don't think you're a thing, either."

We stood there in silence, not looking at each other. Laura was still happily assembling snowmen and I could hear birds and small animals scuttling through the trees around the cabin. By stretching my hearing a little more, I could make out Angela and David talking inside about going back the mansion and what would be happening to the girl if she didn't change her tune. I wasn't about to tell her what was planned for her, but I had to give her something. When I looked back down, she was sniffling. "My father said no one but him could ever love me."

Where did this come from? "Whatcha talkin' 'bout, kid?"

"M-my father, Malcolm Colcord. He said he was the only one who would ever love me because of what I am." She looked up and a tear spilled down her cheek. "But he lied to you guys, he lied to X-23, so what if he did lie to me too?"

"I don't know, kid. That's up to you to decide, I can't make the decision for you."

She looked back down, twisting her hands and shuffling the snow around again. There was a battle going inside her and I decided to leave her alone to fight it. I went back over to Laura and we finished another snowman, then she blindsided me with a snowball the size of Manitoba and another snow fight was on. She shrieked with delight as she dodged the frozen missiles I threw at her and I marveled at her reflexes. In a few years, she might even outstrip me and Angela in the department. I had just taken cover behind a fairly large spruce when I was suddenly pelted in the side of the face by another snowball. I knew where Laura was and I couldn't smell anyone else out here but the three of us. I turned around and Phoenix was standing there, another snowball clutched in her hand. I raised an eyebrow just as she let it fly and I dodged out of the way.

Wasn't this an interesting development? Out of the blue, she wants to play, when just a few minutes ago she was convinced I hated her. I was still not going to look this gift horse in the mouth, so I scooped up a handful of snow, packing it just enough so it wouldn't break up during flight. I scented the air, parsing out where she was in relation to me, then broke cover and threw the snowball at her as I ducked behind another tree. It was then I heard something I didn't think would ever happen - she laughed.

It didn't last long, just a second or two, and when I peeked around the tree trunk, she was standing there with her hands clapped over her mouth, her eyes wide. Laura just stared at her, a forgotten snowball clenched in her little hand, just as surprised as I was. Phoenix looked up, then broke and ran inside, probably back to the bedroom. I sighed and came back out into the open. "C'mon, Laura. Let's go inside."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

A couple days later, I heard a soft knock on the bedroom door in the middle of the night. Angela stirred and rolled over, so I got up, pulled on a pair of pants and opened the door. Laura stood there, looking scared. "What is it kid?"

"Phoenix is gone!" She whispered loudly. "She went out the window!"

I swore softly under my breath. "Ok, go back to bed, I'll take care o' this."

"No! I don't wanna be alone!"

"It's ok, Logan," Angela mumbled behind me. "She can stay with me."

"Go on kid, you heard her." Laura nodded and padded across the floor, then climbed carefully into bed next to my wife. She snuggled into my pillow and Angela turned towards her before settling back to sleep. Satisfied that they were going to be all right, I pulled on a t-shirt and sweatshirt, then went in search of my socks and boots. I carried them out to the main room and sat down quietly in Angela's reading chair to pull them on. Grant rolled over and woke up as I finished up. "Go back to sleep man, I got this."

"What's wrong?" He asked, sitting up.

"Phoenix bolted out the window. Don't worry, I'll find her."

"You want some backup?"

"Nah, I got it. Stay here an' watch my wife for me."

He nodded and stood up, too much of a soldier to sleep while he was on watch, which I approved of completely. I crossed to the door and grabbed the coat I'd been using off the hook and stepped out into the night.

The moon was high in the sky, a bare sliver riding in an inky ocean full of diamond glinting stars. I made my way to the back of the cabin and sure enough, there was a set of tiny footprints in the snow leading away from the open window. I pulled the sash down, then closed my eyes and sniffed the air. Her scent was still pretty strong, so she hadn't been gone very long. I followed her footprints for about five minutes until I came a place where the wind had scoured the rock of the foothills clean of snow. I paused again to reacquire her scent, then set off to the west after here.

I caught up with her only a few minutes later, huddled in the shelter of some boulders. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around them, shivering in the cold. I let out my breath and stood over her. "Dahell you think you're doin'?"

She didn't look at me when she answered. "You don't want me around. Don't lie to me and say you do."

"Whattaya talkin' 'bout?"

"Those drugs you give me? They suppress my telepathy, but they can't make it go away. I might not be able to project all the way across the country right now, but I can still hear what you're thinking sometimes. And sometimes you think this would be easier without me. So, I'm leaving."

Fuck. I had no idea she could still pick up on anything. I sighed heavily and sat down next to her. "Kid, this whole thing would easier without the both o' ya. But ya know I ain't lyin' when I tell ya that we went back there to get the both o' ya the hell outta there."

"But _why_?" She asked and turned to face me, agony written all over her face. "You had to know they'd do awful things to you and you came anyway! Why?"

"Ya have to understand...you're just a kid, damn it!" I said, barely controlling the anger I still felt about the whole thing. "You should be in school, have friends your own age, not bein' made inta some kinda weapon for that bastard!"

"But _you_ did it! They did terrible things to you and you came back anyway!"

"We came back for you an' for Laura, not 'cause we wanted to do all those horrible things. We couldn't stand the thought of 'em doin' the things they did to us to the two o' you. So we came back, to _save_ you."

"I told her though! Your wife, I told her that night we tried to get your daughter that I didn't need to be saved. But you came anyway, even if I didn't want you to!" She dashed angry tears away and stood up. "Don't you see? I _knew_ what they had planned for you and I didn't want you there, but you came anyway! I tried to tell you not to come and you didn't listen!"

"Whoa, wait a minute!" I shouted, springing to my feet. "Whattaya mean, what they had planned?"

"My father knew you would come back, he knew you wouldn't be able to stand that he had kids there. He told me once, a long time ago, that was your biggest problem, the one thing they could never get out of you. Your conscience, your sense of _honor_." She sneered as she said the last word, as though the concept was distasteful. "But my father? He wanted to keep trying, keep working your head over until it was gone."

"What was the plan?" I growled, grabbing her by her arms and giving her a rough shake. "What was it!"

Her eyes blazed and I was thrown across the clearing, slamming into a boulder hard enough to see stars. She stalked forward, one hand held forward in an eerie mimicry of what Jean always did when using her telekinesis, her eyes bright with a visible fire. "As soon as the army was finished, you guys were gonna be drugged, taken to the lab and a whole group of telepaths were gonna work you both over in shifts. My job was break down that hole in your mind, see what was in there and get rid of it. But you got away, just in time, and if you hadn't killed everyone there, you'd be strapped to a table right now, forgetting everything you ever knew." She made a gesture and I felt her power wrap around me in a vise-like grip. "But I wasn't gonna do it! I was gonna pretend and tell them that the hole couldn't be broken, 'cause whatever you have in there is something I don't want to know."

"Let me go," I growled through gritted teeth, straining against the invisble bonds that held me. "I'm sorry if I scared ya, so let me go."

She scowled at me, but lowered her hand and I fell to the ground. "Don't ever do that to me again, you got it?"

"Fine." I levered myself up, but kept my distance. "So why? Why were you gonna lie 'bout gettin' in there?"

"You two are the only ones that can stop that army. Your friends, the X-Men? I don't care what you taught them, they'll never survive. My father picked the mutants he did because each one of them can counter or negate all their powers."

"Except us."

"Except you." The fight went out of her and she collapsed back to the ground. "I was gonna wait til he was gone with the army and run away. No one ever paid attention to what I was doing, as long as I was in bed every night at nine on the dot. I knew all the ways to get out of there. I was going to put everyone in my lab to sleep and just walk out, hitch a ride with someone when I got to the road and call that school you used to live at, have them come get me and warn them about the army and you guys. I figured that at least a couple of them could get close enough to you when you came to at least put you down for a while. I didn't know you were gonna leave when you did."

"Neither did we kid," I replied, getting into a more comfortable position. "Believe me, it wasn't the plan. But why didn't you try an' tell us 'bout any o' this?"

"Because I didn't know if I could trust you! You were right the other day. I'm just a kid for Christ's sake! I should be worrying about math grades and who has a crush on me, not battle tactics and memory wiping! I saw everything in everyone's mind. I saw how they grew up, the things they did and I knew all along that what was happening to me wasn't right. But what could I do? I didn't think I had anywhere to go, until we went to that place to try and get your daughter. I know what I saw in Angela's head there and then when she got to the base...they were different, but I never told anyone. But I knew. I knew that place is really a school, that there's kids there like me and I thought..." she swallowed hard and looked down at her lap. "I thought maybe if I could get there, I could be okay, ya know?"

I nodded. "I do, kid. But ya ain't gonna get there like this. Come back to the cabin, we'll talk more there."

"Why? Why do you care what happens to me? Why does it matter to you?"

"Because it has to matter to somebody an' I'm one o' the only people who knows. An' I care 'cause ya _are_ just a kid an' ya ain't got no one else. I know how it feels to be all alone."

Her face screwed up and fresh tears fell down her cheeks. She curled up on her side on the bare rock and wept, showing more emotion than I'd have ever given her credit for. Through all of this, everything she'd said, she hadn't told a single lie. She had been willing to sacrifice everything for her own chance at freedom and tried to spare us the shit we'd just put ourselves through for the better part of a year. As I sat there watching, I realized that she was crying out every bit of agony she'd been holding in for years, afraid to show it around the base for whatever reasons, but probably motivated by fear. I took a chance and slid over to her and gently took her into my arms. She clung to me as though her life depended on it, her sobs enough to break my heart. Based on what she'd just told me, she was more like Jean than even I realized and I knew then that I had enough room in my heart for this little girl too.

After about half an hour, she finally calmed down and looked up at me. "You must think I'm just a big baby now."

"Nah," I replied, wiping off her cheeks. "I think you're a scared little kid who doesn't know where she fits anymore. Been there, done that." Her mouth curled into a tiny smile, so I kept going. "An' I don't know 'bout you, but I'm freezin' my balls off here."

"I don't have those," she said, her smile getting a little bigger. "But my ass is about to fall off."

"Hey now, no language like that til you're older."

"Aw hell, Wolverine. I don't have to be a mind reader to know you don't really care."

"You're right, I don't. But you'll give Scooter a heart attack if ya talk like that at the school."

"So you'll still take me there? You'll still let me come with you?"

"Do ya think I woulda come out here in the freezin' cold if I was just gonna let ya go?"

"No, I suppose not."

I chuckled and stood up, then held out my hand to her. She took hold of me and I helped to her feet. "Now let's get back before Grant thinks we killed each other."

"Okay." We started on her way, her hand still clasped in mind, but she stopped after just a few steps. "Wolv...Logan?"

"Yeah kid?"

"Can I have a real name too?"

I smirked and nodded. "Sure thing, Rachel."

* * *

**AN: **First off, i am alive and well and doing just fine...but you may recall from previous author's notes in previous stories that my fiance' has been quite ill for some time...well, he finally had his surgery to have the last of the problem taken care of (pseudo-cysts on his pancreas...don't ask, it takes too long to explain) and he's home and on the mend once and for all! Of course, there's much taking care of him that needs done, so between that and myself being sick more often than not since early july, well...updating took a back seat for a while...but i'm back now, i have more time and i will try really hard to not make you wait any longer than is absolutely necessary...:) 

Huge thanks to everyone who reviewed, pm'd or IM'd me to see how things were going...your thoughts/prayers/well-wishes were much appreciated and my fiance' sends his thanks for them...:)

**Now, if i get a new reviewer, i'll post a new chapter right away...so go ahead and hit that little button down there and just say hello or something...:)**


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

(Hank)

Yesterday was very exciting for everyone here. First off, we learned that Logan and Angela would be returning to us tomorrow, which makes everyone very happy. I don't think it really occurred to anyone how important their presence was until they were no longer here, so having them home will do wonders to set things right. I know they had their reasons for doing what they did, not the least of which are the two girls they are bringing with them, but they have been gone far too long and I, for one, am very relieved that their return is imminent, our own wayward prodigal children, gone to hell and come back to us at last.

It was also an important day for Dr. Lee and I, as we successfully produced our first batch of carbornadium. Of course, this compound poses a very serious ethical question for me. I understand that it will be needed, as it is the most effective weapon we have against the Weapon X army that will soon be sweeping across the land, but as a doctor I took a vow to first do no harm. How does someone in my position weigh the need to protect the masses versus the need to heal those in need of it? This is the first time that my duty as a doctor and my duty as an X-Man have been in such great conflict with one another, and this is not a decision I can make lightly.

However, Dr. Lee also informed me that the decision may be taken out of my hands anyway. It seems that close to ninety-five percent of the Weapon X army all have a serious design flaw in that they are inherently incapable of fighting the effects of adamantium poisoning. The few who are able to combat it are natural ferals, who have a specialized white blood cell that does nothing _but_ fend off heavy metal poisoning in its myriad forms. The Director had ordered Dr. Lee to remedy this situation, being under the belief that this was something the team who originally developed the artificial healing factor had overlooked. Since the serum had been created using Logan's blood, the doctor attempted to do just that, although what he'd been able to glean from the original teams' notes indicated that the specialized cells are simply unusually resistant to replication. He does believe that a solution can be found, but it cannot be found before many of those poor people succumb to the poisoning. There simply isn't enough time.

Which poses yet another ethics question for me. Do we spare as many of them as we can, in hopes of reversing their conditioning and bringing them into our fold? Or do I simply sit idly by and let nature – technically – take its course? Many of those people may discover that they no longer have lives to go back to, so would it not be better to show them there is a better way? Or will they, like Logan and Angela before them, ultimately break their conditioning and turn on their maker? Or worse, could some of them actually _want_ to be doing the things they will be forced to do, and thus we will be unleashing something terrible on the world if we allow them to live?

I am but a single man, however, and I only have so much time to worry about these things. So, I will worry about these issues one at a time and worry about solving them as they come up. My first task is to do what I can to stop that army from laying waste to the world. Everything else can wait.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Storm)

Tonight is our last night in the safe house and I am surprised to discover that I will miss it. We have been packing since yesterday, gathering all the things we've acquired over the past months. Sam and Evie arguably have the most, since they have been sculpting almost non-stop since we got here. Each of their creations has been safely packed away, many of Sam's items being sent on to his agent for showing and sale, with the best of Evie's artwork going with them. There's only about three or four pieces, but they are quite beautiful and Sam's agent thinks she'll be able to sell them with no problem. Probably not for as much as a Samuel Levison original, but every artist has to start somewhere.

We've already packed up the baby things and sent them on to the mansion. Charles informed me that he'd already taken the liberty of remodeling our room into a suite much like the one Logan and Angela share and that Piotr has already moved all of our furniture into it. Oh, the home stretch! Only a few more weeks and I'll be bringing a son or daughter into the world. At least I know that an epidural will work on me and I won't have to go through everything that Angela went through with Evie. It was _almost_ enough to make me swear off children completely!

One more dinner in this house, one more night in these beds. By this time tomorrow, we'll be home again, most of us preparing to face the coming crisis. I will be left behind; I know that even if I don't like it. But I can say that using my powers doesn't seem to have any adverse effects on the baby, so if anyone from that army shows up on the doorstep, I'll be waiting there with my hands full of lightning.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Evie)

_Dear Diary,_

_Eleven months, three weeks, one day, thirteen hours and twenty-six minutes since mom and dad sent me away._

_Did you know if we had to wait just one more week, we'd hit the one year mark? I'm glad that we're going home tomorrow. That way, we'll make it just under a year and that makes me very happy._

_We have to wait until tomorrow because Uncle Charles said he has to talk to Mommy and Daddy before I come home. I don't know why, but he said it's really important that he talks to them before they see me. I keep wondering why, because I know they'd be awfully happy to see me and everyone else, but he's older than me and I suppose that makes him smarter, so it's probably for the best._

_I'm gonna try and sell some of the things I made while I was here. I really like sculpting, it's fun and I can make cool things. I have a bowl, two vases and a regular sculpture that Sam's sending to his agent. He said they were more than good enough to sell, so I guess we'll let his agent try. The worst thing that could happen is that she keeps them for herself, I suppose. As long as someone likes them, I guess that's a good thing. But if she sells them, I really will be the world's youngest mutant artist. How cool is that?_

_Erin is coming back with us, too. She says she still has things to teach me and that maybe other kids can learn stuff from her too, kids with powers like ours. I don't know how many like us there can be. I remember Uncle Charles saying precogs were pretty rare before, even more rare than really strong telepaths. But she says there's other powers that are kind of like ours that she can help with and she said that since meeting all of us, she didn't feel right not trying to help anymore. I don't think she'll ever be comfortable fighting and stuff, but she really is a great teacher and I know Uncle Charles always likes to have new teachers._

_But I am so excited! I know I'll never be able to sleep tonight, knowing that by the time lunch comes around tomorrow, I'll be with Mommy and Daddy again! It's like my birthday, Christmas, the Fourth of July and the last day of school, all rolled up into one big thing with a red bow on top! I don't think there's anything that could ever be better than this!_

_Love, Evie Marie Logan_

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Logan)

We waited two more days before calling the mansion for a ride. We figured that Rachel would want that time to get used to her new name and being around us before we tossed her into learning everything about her powers. I'm not sure what she was talking about, with the mansion being a school and all that. Sure, we had some kids there from time to time, ones with powers too dangerous for them to learn to control on their own, but it's not like the place was overrun with kids or anything. I'd have never stayed there for as long as I did had that been the case. Not that I don't like children or anything. I've had enough of them that I like them just fine. But me, a teacher? Come on now, pull the other one.

But we didn't mention it around her. Our relationship was still fragile and Angela had lingering reservations, but she hadn't been there. She hadn't seen her break down and cry like she felt all the pain of all the people in the world. She hadn't seen that little kid acting more human than any of us had ever seen. I was there and I know the difference between acting and real emotion. Not to mention, I can smell lies.

When we did make the call, we told them to come for us in three days, so we could get the cabin back in order. I sometimes think that place might have a little bit of real magic in it. It brought me back from all kinds of nasty shit twice and now for these little girls who had been created literally from the ground up, designed to be nothing more than weapons. Rachel's powers were already fully manifested, so we knew what to expect from her and could train her with no problem. Laura was still too young, though her reflexes and senses were already heightened. But from everything we learned from Hank about Evie, genetics can be a tricky thing. Since we'd learned about Project Phoenix, he also told us that cloning isn't an exact science either, that the X gene only guarantees mutation, not necessarily what that mutation will be. But Laura was so much like me I had a hard time believing she'd develop mutations that were completely different from mine.

It's weird, looking at her. She really does look like a tiny female version of me, all the way down to the scowl. She'd loosened up a lot in our time here, but she was still prone to periods of brooding and angry outbursts. If no one had ever told me she was my clone, I could have believed she was simply my daughter. But I can't help but smile when I imagine the look on One-Eye's face when we tell him who she is and where she comes from. In just a few short years, her powers will manifest fully and there really will be two of me walking around the mansion. Few things over the past year have given me true pleasure – Angela being excepted, of course – but thinking about how he'll handle that? Kind of makes me tingle.

Now Rachel is another story. She said she'll be thirteen in a couple weeks, but her resemblance to Jean is borderline creepy. She's already much taller than Angela, her hair and eyes are exactly the same color as Jean's, she even has the same smile, when it comes out. I can hear Jean in her voice. The only thing that's truly different is her scent, which isn't all that surprising. All people have the same baseline scent of "human", but it's the subtle differences that set them apart. Angela smells a bit earthy with a spicy undertone, like clove or cinnamon. Laura smells like fresh air and sunshine, though I suspect that'll change as she grows up. Jean smelled like flowers with a sharp, clean undertone, almost antiseptic. Rachel smells like sage, but with a bitter tang to it, and just a hint of evergreen. Scott might find himself fooled by his eyes someday, but I'll never be fooled by my nose. No matter who she was created from, she's not Jean and never will be.

But that was the very least of my worries as Angela and I settled into bed that last night at the cabin. What weighed heavily on my mind had everything to do with what Rachel had told me about the mansion, things that were in direct conflict with my own memories of the place. As soon as I had my arms firmly wrapped around her, I asked Angela about it. "Darlin', have you talked to Rachel 'bout what she saw that night at the mansion? The night Evie…" I couldn't finish.

"No," she whispered and I felt a tear land on my shoulder. "I never had the heart, you know?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I do. But she uh, she told me some stuff anyway that don't make sense."

"Like what?"

"She said it's a school, a real school with kids just like her. But that ain't what I remember. An' she told me I have a hole in my mind." I looked down to see her looking back up at me. "She said you have one too."

"What? No Logan, that can't be right. I mean yeah, Xavier had some kids there who were a real danger, but not that many, not enough to fill a whole school."

"She said that what she saw in your mind before was different from what she saw when we got to the base."

"What are you saying?"

"What if someone got to us? She didn't scan us right away, remember? We were in sensory dep for how long? They coulda had another telepath workin' us over the whole time, givin' us suggestions or wipin' things out. What if both o' us are a coupla time bombs just waitin' to go off?"

She shook her head and leaned up. "No, I don't believe that. She's strong enough that she'd have known if someone had been meddling before she scanned us. Maybe she just saw all the kids we'd helped over the years and got confused. There'd be what? About a hundred or so over ten years? That could explain it."

"An' maybe the Director's an underhanded bastard who _wanted_ us ta get away someday so we could go back an' destroy somethin' we both love."

"Even so, even if it is true, you know Charles is more than strong enough to remove anything like that. He's done it before, with Totem and me, remember? Logan, I want to go _home_. Don't tell me you don't want to."

"I do, darlin', I really do. But what about that 'hole in the mind' crap? She says we both got one, a black spot she can't get through."

"It's the feral mind, nothing more, the thing that takes over when we lose control."

I sighed. "I hope you're right."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We woke everyone up early the next morning so we could finish our last-minute packing. The only clothes any of us were taking with us would be the clothes on our backs. If I never see another pair of fatigues, it will be far too soon. I wasn't worried about the girls, since we would take them shopping as soon as the dust cleared. But Chuck had said he'd send Kitty and Jubilee out to buy them some things to hold them over until we could take them ourselves. Grant didn't need to worry about it at all; once we were settled back at the mansion, he was continuing on to Washington and back to his own home. His work for Bennington wasn't over yet.

So, we had a quick breakfast and cleaned up the mess so Grant and I could secure the cabin. We had just finished turning off the gas and water and bleeding the pipes when I caught the sound of a Blackbird approaching, number Two if I had to guess. I couldn't hold back my smile at the sound. Angela heard it too and seemed just as happy. A few seconds later, the others heard it and Grant was immediately on guard. "Whoa, stand down soldier," I said. "That's just our ride."

"Sounds like a Lockheed of some sort," he replied.

I shrugged. "It is." He gave me a shocked look and I laughed. "Your Mr. Bennington has been very good to the X-Men too, bub."

Less than a minute later, the jet flew overhead and settled into the clearing just beyond the trees that surround the cabin. Laura slipped her hand into mine and the five of us left the cabin, Angela locking it behind her. We made our way through the trees and came out just as the ramp was lowering. We paused at the edge of the clearing, but Angela broke and ran as soon as she saw a flash of blue, which could only be Hank. This was confirmed by the time she got to the base of the ramp and he swept her into a huge embrace. I smiled to myself and the rest of us walked across more slowly.

By the time we got to the jet, he'd released her and she was hugging Scott. Hank closed the gap between us and surprised me when he pulled me into a hug of his own. "Logan! By God it is good to see you!"

I clapped him on the back and pulled away. "You too, Hank! How's everyone?"

"Fine, fine!" He gripped my shoulder briefly, then looked down at Laura, who was hiding behind my leg. "And who do we have here?"

I pulled her gently forward and knelt down next to her. "Laura, this is Dr. Hank McCoy. I know he looks scary, but he's really very nice. Hank, this is Laura Grace Logan."

The doc gave me a curious look, but bent down and held out a massive hand. "It is very good to meet you, Laura." She took his hand tentatively and shook it, but didn't say anything. He then turned to the others. "And these are?"

I ushered Rachel forward and she shook his hand with a bit less fear. "This is Rachel Anne Grey, code name Phoenix," I said and Hank gave me that curious look again. I leaned in and lowered my voice. "I'll explain later."

"I think you better," he replied.

Grant stepped up and held out his hand. "David Grant, BCI. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"Ah yes, the man who's been keeping us informed." He stepped back and motioned to the jet. "Now, if you would all like to follow me, we will be taking off in a few minutes. Thank you for flying X-Man Air."

I shook my head, chuckling and fell in behind him. Angela took the girls from me and boarded the jet with David and I stopped in front of Scott. We just stood there for a moment, but he reached out and clapped me on the shoulder. "Logan, I never thought I would be happy to see you."

"Yeah, I know what ya mean," I replied, clapping him back. "But after the year we've had an' the assholes we had to put up with, you'll be a piece o' cake to handle."

He threw his head back and laughed, then moved aside. "Go on, get on board. Welcome back."

I smiled and climbed up the ramp with Scott right behind me. Angela was already in her usual seat at the far back of the jet, with Laura and Rachel sitting across from her. Hank was already firing up the engines as Scott raised the ramp and made sure everything was secure. I strapped in next to Angela and wrapped an arm around her. She immediately buried her face in my chest as the jet shuddered, then shot into the sky and back towards the mansion. I heard Laura snicker, so I looked over at her, eyebrow raised. "What's so funny, squirt?"

"Angela's 'fraid to fly," she said and giggled again.

"I didn't think she was afraid of _anything_," Rachel added helpfully.

"Listen to me. Everyone has a weakness. _Everyone._ Since it's damned hard to get her onto an airplane in the middle o' battle, hers isn't so bad. But never forget that everyone has somethin' you can take advantage of to bring 'em down."

"So what's yours?"

I laughed. "I ain't tellin'. You'll just haveta figure it out on your own."

They both grumbled, but put their heads together and debated softly about what my possible weakness could be. I smiled a little as I watched them, finally acting just like any other little girls. Angela pulled away from my chest and settled her head on my shoulder. "They're gonna be all right, aren't they?" She murmured.

"Yeah, I think so." I looked down at her and kissed her forehead. "We all will."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I dozed on and off for the rest of the flight, but roused myself when I felt the jet on its final approach. A few minutes later, it came to rest inside the hangar bay and Scott lowered the ramp as soon as the engines were powered down. I shook Angela gently, who had miraculously fallen asleep about an hour before. She sat up and stretched, then smiled up at me. "We're here. We're really home."

"Yeah tiger, we are." I stood up and went to leave the jet, but Hank's furry hand on my elbow stopped me. "Need somethin', Blue?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so," he replied and let me go. "Charles would like all of you to have a complete physical before you go upstairs."

"Come on, Hank! We don't have any diseases," Angela complained. "Hell, I don't even think we can carry them. They don't live long enough in our systems to make a difference."

"Still, he insists and he is the man in charge around here."

"Doc, we been poked an' prodded enough for ten lifetimes." I said, scowling.

"Logan, I understand your feelings about this. But I must do what he asks. I assure you, this is only to ensure that there aren't any…surprises."

I narrowed my eyes, but I finally understood what he was getting at. He wanted to make sure we didn't have any implants, such as a micro-tracker, or even something nastier. I nodded. "Fine, if he insists. But if there were any, we'd have known at the cabin."

"Nevertheless, it is always better to be safe rather than sorry." He gestured to the ramp and we walked off ahead of him. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to see Chuck sitting there, but I was. Angela ran across the gap between us and threw herself into his arms, which caused him to laugh even as he hugged her back. I know the two of them have some kind of special relationship, something that developed back when we were destroying bases one at a time, and I was happy for it. As much as we love each other, there are just some things we can't always say to each other. When that happened, I would go meditate; she talked to Xavier.

The girls hid behind me once again, which made me chuckle. Neither of them had ever been exposed to so many people at once who didn't actually want anything from them, so their wariness was understandable. It would take a while before they got used to it, but they'd be settled in and making friends before we knew it. I took their hands and led them over to the Professor. "Hey Chuck."

"Logan, welcome back," he said, clasping my hand for a shake. "I see you've brought someone with you."

"Yeah. This is Laura," I pushed her forward a little, "and Rachel," she stepped forward on her own. "If you could, I'd like 'em to have a room together, as close to ours as you can manage."

"I had already anticipated that. Their room is ready and waiting for them, just as soon as Henry finishes his examinations. I would, however, prefer if the four of you spend the night in the infirmary."

"Aw hell no!" I said, taking a step back. "Come on, we're fine! All o' us."

"Please Logan, I understand how you feel and I assure you, I have the best possible reasons for this." He wheeled himself forward a bit and leaned forward. "I must ask you to trust me."

I sighed and scowled at him. "You owe me."

"More than you'll ever know," he replied cryptically. He thumbed the control on his chair and led the way to the infirmary.

Dr. Lee was there along with Dr. Endicott, and she took the girls aside personally. Hank ushered us to the isolation area in the back with Dr. Lee right beside him. "So, what're we doin' back here?" I asked.

"Dr. Endicott will be busy with the girls out there and we thought it best to give them some privacy," Hank said, handing both of us a gown. "You know the drill."

I glared at the proffered garment, but grabbed it and went behind the screen with Angela. Normally, I would take advantage of any situation where she ends up naked, but I didn't want to do anything with the audience out there. She still gave me a mischievous look and swatted me on the ass before going back out. I smiled and followed her a moment later.

For the next two hours, we were poked, prodded, sampled, cat scanned and I'm pretty sure they invented a couple tests just to piss me off. Towards the end, Xavier came in and waited patiently for everything to be over. Finally, Hank stepped aside and let the Professor take front and center. "How are you feeling?" He asked.

"I told ya, I'm fine. You know me, nothin' sticks for long."

"I didn't mean physically, Logan. How are you holding up? These past months must have been terrible for you."

I ran a hand through my hair and looked over to Angela. She was looking down at the floor, her feet swinging back and forth. "Whattaya want me to say? That I'm sorry for all the shit they made me do? That if I could, I'd take it all back?"

"That we didn't like it?" Angela whispered and looked up. "That's what you want, isn't it? To know for sure that we're the same people who left? Well, we're not. Our daughter and two of our best friends are dead, Charles. We've been through hell and back because of it. They tortured us, used us to sabotage, infiltrate. They made us murder people and we did it because we had to or else we wouldn't be sitting here now. Did we like it? Yeah, in a way we did." A single tear rolled down her cheek, but she didn't move to wipe it away. "You have no idea what it's like, Charles. To be able to give in to that animal, that rabid _thing_ that's always there, always screaming to get out, run free. You don't know how fucking _good_ it feels."

"No, I don't. And I don't want to know. But my primary concern is for the safety of the people in this house, so I have to know. Are you safe?"

I felt my face flush with sudden anger. "What the fuck kinda question is that, Xavier? We ain't gonna go off an' kill everythin' in sight! This is _our home_, unless a lot more's changed since we left."

"I am sorry, Logan, but I must know for certain."

"What's that s'posed to mean?" I said quietly as I hopped off the table, but I felt my knees go weak and my vision swam out of focus. "What the fuck…"

"Forgive me, Logan," I heard Xavier say in my mind as my consciousness slipped away. "You'll understand soon enough."

* * *

**AN:** See? I told you it wouldn't take so long for me to update:) Of course, i'm sure the entire world knows about the exciting weather in the midwest here, so between thunderstorms, flooding and a possible tornado a few miles from my house, well...i'm sure you'll forgive me for taking a whole week to get here...:) Many thanks to everyone for reading/reviewing...i'm kinda tired tonight so i'm taking the lazy way out...:) 

**Now, if you've never reviewed one of my stories and you want to see a new chapter sooner rather than later, just click the little "go" button and say hello or something...i'll post a new chapter right away:)**


	17. Chapter 17

**TISSUE ALERT!! TISSUE ALERT!! **

* * *

Chapter 17

(Angela)

I didn't know what was happening until it was too late. I felt a brief moment of dizziness, then everything went black. But the really odd part was how it didn't feel like I was really unconscious. It was more like the way it feels after I die and I'm waiting to come back, like the whole world is something just beyond my reach. But I do remember my last thought before the darkness claimed me: "Charles is doing this."

I didn't know why he did that, at the time. He had to know that no matter what we'd just been through that we would have never come back if we honestly thought we'd be a danger to anyone there. Those people are our friends, our family, and I would rather die forever than hurt them. I know Logan feels the same way, even if he doesn't really show it. He may be a deeply emotional man, but he's not one for demonstrating how he feels unless it happens to be anger. Of course, if he's doing that, the person he's angry with generally doesn't survive long enough to appreciate how very beautiful his rage can be.

After what seemed like forever, I felt something in my mind break loose, for lack of a better term. It was almost like there had been something in there that was being held back by a dam and a flood of information washed through me. And I knew. I remembered all of it, how we'd had the Professor bury certain memories and create completely false ones to layer over them. The school, our students, people we knew. But most importantly, the one thing that came through as the brightest spot of all. _Evie wasn't dead_.

I sat straight up on the exam table. "Evie!" I cried, looking around frantically. Logan sat up a split second later, our daughter's name also on his lips. He looked at me, then stumbled over and took me into his arms, both of us weeping uncontrollably. I could still feel the overwhelming grief I'd lived through for the past eleven months for the daughter I thought we'd lost, but even as I held my husband, it was beginning to fade along with the false memories attached to it. As that happened, the true memories surfaced slowly, not at all like the crashing cascade that had once driven Logan out of his mind. We whispered softly to each other as it happened, one memory leading to another, until we both got to the very last one.

It was actually a message from Charles, something he'd said to us before completing the process we'd asked him to do. "Logan, Angela, I am sorry for all of this. I know it wasn't an easy decision for you to make, to have your memories purposely taken away, and to let me use my own judgment in creating the false memories to fool the Weapon X telepaths. I apologize for the pain that I have caused you, allowing you to believe that your daughter, Sam and Ororo are all dead, but I felt that it was the only way to keep anyone from searching for Genevieve. I also apologize for misleading you as to the reasons for your examinations upon returning to the mansion, but I could think of no other way to keep you isolated long enough to allow the password to take effect and for you to assimilate the information. I imagine you are both quite weary of the infirmary by now and I am certain there is someone in my office who is quite eager to see you."

I pulled away and looked up. "Logan, she's here! Come on!"

I hopped off the table and started for the door, but he caught me around the waist. "Whoa tiger! Hold on a second!"

"What? Why? I want to see my daughter!"

He looked down and plucked at my hospital gown. "Not with yer ass hangin' out ya don't."

I blushed and smacked him on the arm. "Asshole. Where's our clothes?" I looked around, but the clothing we'd worn in was gone. Two neat piles sat on a couple of chairs near the door, some of the clothes we'd left behind. I tore the gown off and pulled on the worn jeans and the black tank top, barely pausing to pull on the sneakers sitting on the floor. I glanced in the mirror and ran my fingers impatiently through my curls to get them into some semblance of order. Satisfied that I wasn't going to scare anyone with my appearance, I dashed through the doors of the isolation area, through the main infirmary and almost collided with Kitty as I rushed through the doors. She yelped and phased and I ran right through her, which is a disconcerting feeling to say the least. I skidded to a stop and turned.

"Oh my God Angela, I am so sorry!" She cried.

I just laughed and pulled her into a hug. "It's okay, Kitty! It is so good to see you!"

"We have so much to tell you guys!" She said, hugging me back. "You have no idea how much has changed around here!"

"I'm sure you're right, kid," Logan said and she turned to him and threw her arms around his neck. He returned the embrace, then pulled away. "But it's just gonna haveta wait til later."

She smacked her forehead and stepped aside. "Go! Go! They're waiting for you in the Professor's office."

We smiled at her and continued our mad dash to the stairs, not wanting to waste a precious few seconds waiting for the elevator to arrive. We hit the door and startled a group of kids just outside the door, one of which gasped loudly and turned invisible. But we barely noticed as we rushed past them, so eager to hold our daughter that we didn't slow down until we got to the door to the office. Charles must have been keeping a mental eye out for our arrival, as the door was opened from within and a small black-haired whirlwind came rushing out. "Mommy! Daddy!" We went to our knees and enfolded our daughter in a tight embrace, not quite believing that this was true. There were more tears all around and we were all babbling at once, but it didn't matter. We were together once more; a family, and no force in the world would ever take us apart again.

After a few minutes, we heard the Professor's voice in our heads. 'Perhaps you would rather continue this reunion in a less public place,' he said dryly, startling a laugh out of me through my tears.

I looked over at Logan, who simply picked Evie up and carried her into the office, his other arm wrapped around my waist. The door closed behind us and we turned. "Got any love for me, sugar?" Rogue asked and Logan immediately let me go, wrapping his now free arm around her shoulders and pulling her close.

I brought a hand up to my mouth, tears still flowing freely, but turned when I felt a hand fall on my shoulder. "Ah, _mon ami_, it be very good t' see you!" Remy said and I threw my arms around his neck. He whispered to me in French and I still have no idea what he said to me, but it didn't matter. I really had missed the Cajun, all the previous annoyance I'd ever felt for him melting away in that moment.

He let me go a moment later, only to be replaced by Sam, who lifted me clear off my feet in his enthusiasm. "Sam!" I gasped as he squeezed me. "I can't breathe!"

"Oh!" He exclaimed and put me down, making a great show of brushing me off. "Hope I didn't dent you too!"

"No, I think everything's just fine," I replied with a smile in spite of my tears. My eyes fell on Storm, who walked over calmly to give me a hug. I pulled away after a moment and looked down. "No one told me you were expecting!"

"We didn't think it was quite as important as getting that little girl back to you," she replied, her own eyes tearing up.

"When are you due?"

"Any time now, really. And it can't be too soon for me!"

I smiled and turned to the last person I had to greet. Rogue carefully wrapped her arms around me and I felt a huge swell of affection for her. In many ways, she was like a daughter to me. She had always reminded me so much of my Emma and having her as part of my extended family had always been a source of happiness. "Thank you so much for keeping her safe," I whispered.

"It was my pleasure, Angela," she replied as she let me go. I turned back to Logan, who still had Evie in his arms as he finished saying hello to Storm. I slipped under his free arm again and reached out to touch my daughter.

"Mommy, I missed you so much," she whispered with a slight catch in her voice.

"I know, sweetheart. I missed you too, more than you will ever know. And I swear, we'll never be apart again, all right?"

She nodded and the three of us moved to the sofa where we sat down with her in between us. A box of tissues sat on the coffee table in front of me and I helped myself to a huge handful of them. Charles sat in front of his desk, his own eyes looking more than a little moist and I handed one to him. "Thank you, Angela," he said as he wiped his eyes. "I must say I wasn't expecting to be affected this deeply."

"Charles, don't even pretend you're not a big softie," Storm admonished with a smile. "We know you better than that."

"That you do." He smiled briefly, but became serious after only a moment. "However, we do not have the time for me to indulge myself right now." He reached behind him and took a file from his desk. "I will not keep the three of you any longer than I must, but there is a matter of some urgency to be addressed."

"The army," Logan stated, his expression grave. "You need to know what to expect."

"Precisely. Now, if you could at least fill us in on a few of the details, I'll let you get on your way." We nodded and he opened the file, then pulled an elegant silver pen from his pocket. "What can you tell me about it?"

"There's 'bout two thousand of 'em, but we only trained 'bout an eighth o' that." Charles nodded and began writing. "They've all got the artificial healin' factor, but it ain't gonna help 'em for very long."

"Ah yes, the problem with the adamantium poisoning."

"That's it in a nutshell, yeah. As for powers, ya got everythin' you can think of, none of 'em below a class three, all with adamantium skeletons."

"Any class fives?"

"Not that we know of, now that Phoenix is here with us," I said. "Of the hundred and twenty-five we trained, only about thirty were class four. I don't know about the other training facilities and I don't know who trained them."

"I see." He took a few more notes, then looked up. "Are there any we should keep a particular eye out for?"

I looked at Logan, who shook his head. "Nah, not really. Most of 'em were already pretty good with their powers, but me an' Angela could wipe the floor with 'em ourselves. One at a time or all at once, wouldn't matter."

"Yes, but you two are exceptionally skilled, trained specifically for this kind of thing. Kyrohyou has done the best he could in your absence, which is quite well indeed, but prior to coming here he had no field experience."

"An' the Danger Room, real as it is, just ain't the same." He looked down as Evie snuggled into his side and started stroking her hair. "But we caught news o' some o' the stuff ya went on an' he helped plenty before we left."

"As I said, he has done quite well in your absence, as have Scott and Kurt. Buzz has also been working himself to a thread creating new and more dangerous mutants for the teams to face in the Danger Room, but having even a few that are exactly like those we'll have to face would be a great help."

"We'll get to that in the next few days," I said, looking down at Evie. "But right now, we would like some time alone, if we could."

"Of course. We can continue this another time." He smiled as we stood, but then gestured for us to stop. "Oh, one more thing. Do either of you have any idea how many Sentinels he still has at his disposal?"

"No, we don't. We weren't brought in on everything and from what we've learned since we got out of there, we wouldn't have been until the end phase of the project."

"And what is that?"

"I only know that Logan and I were to be completely mindwiped and reprogrammed to lead the army. I'm sure the Director will be releasing his hounds much sooner than planned now that we've left, because he knows the first thing we would do is tell you all about it."

Charles' expression became grave as he wrote that down. "I anticipated as much, but now that you've confirmed this I will need to accelerate my plans as well."

"You mean Magneto," Logan stated. "Mystique told us 'bout that much. Chuck, I gotta tell ya, I think you're a fool to trust that guy for even a minute."

"I understand your reservations, Logan, but he is perhaps the only mutant capable of disabling that army and I would be remiss if I did not do everything in my power to stop them."

"Oh, I get that part just fine. But ya haveta know he'll stab ya in the back first chance he gets. He's already proven that he's got no problem sacrificin' everyone in this school to get what he wants."

The Professor sighed and put his pen away. "I know. I can only hope that he will be able to put aside his personal agenda for the sake of the greater good this time."

"Don't hold your breath." He looked over at me and we left the office with Evie walking between us. I pushed aside all of my own feelings about the whole situation, deciding to worry about them later. Right now, I had almost a year to catch up on with my daughter, miraculously come back from the dead.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We spent the next several hours out by the river, figuring it was far enough out that no one would come looking for us, barring an emergency of apocalyptic proportions. Evie told us everything that had happened since the last time we saw her and we were astonished that she'd stolen the dog tag-style necklaces I'd had made for Logan and I so long ago. But I couldn't find it in my heart to be angry with her. After all, she'd only wanted something to keep close to us. But I needn't have worried, since she'd never seen us doing anything particularly brutal and I thanked the gods for small favors. I never wanted her to see that part of our lives, even though I knew deep down I could never protect her from it forever. Especially because she'd decided she wanted to be an X-Man.

"Honey, I don't know about that," I said, stroking her hair. "It can be very dangerous and we wouldn't want you to get hurt."

"Oh! You don't have to worry 'bout that, Mommy," she said, grinning. "I have the healin' thing too!"

"What? When did this happen?"

"I skinned up my knee a while ago an' before I could go to Aunt Rogue to help me fix it up, it went away."

"Well princess, maybe it wasn't that bad," Logan pointed out.

She shook her head. "Uh-uh, it was. It was bleedin' an' everythin', but then it felt like it was burning for a couple seconds, then it was gone."

I glanced over her head to Logan, who looked worried. "Well, why don't ya wait til you're a little older to make up your mind 'bout that, all right?"

"No, I already made up my mind. I wanna be an X-Man cuz I can see stuff 'fore it happens. So if I already know what's gonna happen on a mission, I can be there to help stuff not happen that's really bad. An' with the healin' thing, I can't even get very hurt for very long."

"Well, we still have plenty of time before that happens anyway, right Logan?" I said, taking her hand. "And it might be that you decide you want to be something else when you grow up, like a ballerina or veterinarian."

"I'm tellin' you, I won't," she said, so very sure of herself. Logan and I smiled down at her and we just sat there, enjoying being with our daughter. I really didn't care if she wanted to grow up to be a grocery store clerk, as long as I was there for every minute of it. We had done what we had to do in order to protect her, but I vowed once more to never let something like this happen again. If there were a next time, we would simply take her ourselves and find a place to hide, for a century if we had to. I would never be separated from her again for as long as I lived.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We made our way back inside as the sun was just starting to set. News of our return had already spread throughout the mansion and all of our old friends and students wanted to greet us properly. So it didn't surprise us too much when we made the turn to the dining room, only to be waylaid by Kurt.

"_Mein freunde_, if you vould come vith me," he said, bowing with a flourish. We smiled as he led us downstairs and I just knew that Club Danger Room was making a return appearance. Sure enough, he led us downstairs, where Laura and Rachel were waiting with the Professor.

"Charles, you didn't have to go to all this trouble for us," I said, leaning down to kiss his cheek.

"What, and miss the opportunity to have a party?" he returned, his eyes twinkling. "Besides, we haven't had much to celebrate all these months, so it provided the perfect excuse to cancel classes for tomorrow and let the children have a bit of a holiday." He smiled and thumbed the control on his chair. "I have been getting acquainted with our two newest students. Rachel tells me you gave her something to suppress her telepathy?"

"Yeah, about that…"

"No, there's no need to explain. You couldn't have known her true intentions. But I would be most interested in learning more about this drug. It may prove useful in the coming conflict."

"Talk to Dr. Lee, he's the one who gave it to us."

"I shall do that first thing in the morning. In the meantime…" he pressed the control to open the doors and we were greeted by a wall of sound. "Logan, Angela, Genevieve, welcome home."

We entered the room and were immediately swallowed by a tide of people, all of our teammates and students, the people who made up the rest of our crazy extended family. Ryan Hiller spun me around and surprised me with a firm but purely platonic kiss on the mouth, while Bobby gave me a more sedate hug, a peck on the cheek and whispered "wait until you see what I can do now!" in my ear. I gave him a mischievous look and he blushed. "That's not what I meant!"

Before I could say anything else, Seth and Simon came over and I hugged them both fiercely. I held up my left hand and smiled. "Thank you for your wedding gifts. They're perfect."

"I thought you might like them," Simon replied. "You have no idea what we had to go through to get your sizes!"

"An' how did ya manage that anyway?" Logan asked, coming up beside me.

"Well, we actually had the Professor get them during one of the memory wiping sessions."

"Yeah, and then we had to make sure they fit during another one," Seth added. "It's just a good thing my brother could make changes right there!"

I hugged them both again and Logan shook their hands, and the night continued in much the same way. There was a full buffet with all of our favorites laid out on one side of the club, though my new Little Wolvie was just as obsessed with carrots as Evie had been. By midnight, the younger students had been shuffled off to bed, except Laura and Rachel who were understandably overwhelmed by everything. But Evie had revealed her own generous nature by introducing the two girls to the other kids and by the time things were winding down, the three of them seemed to be getting along well. Which is a good thing, because we had every intention of keeping them in our family.

We finally decided to call it a night ourselves around two, Logan carrying an exhausted Evie while Hank followed us carrying an equally exhausted Laura. Rachel shuffled along behind us, just barely awake enough to get back to the room the two of them had been given. I let her know that my room was right next door if they needed anything, then made sure they were both tucked in before turning in ourselves.

Logan went to put Evie in her own bed, but she stirred and wrapped her arms around his neck. "No Daddy, lemme sleep with you guys. Just this once."

He sighed, and I smiled and nodded. I helped her change into her nightgown and got her settled, then changed into a pair of sweats and a tank top before climbing in next to her. Logan did the same on the other side of the bed and we both rolled over to put our arms around our daughter. He lowered his face to her hair, breathing her in while I stroked her arm gently. "Good night honey. Mommy loves you."

"Love you too Mommy." She fidgeted for another moment and went back to sleep.

"It's so good to be home," I whispered.

"That it is, darlin'," Logan replied softly. "That it is."

* * *

**AN:** Ok, i don't know if YOU needed any tissues, but i needed them writing it (Dee, you can just shoosh right now!), so i thought i'd warn ya...:) 

I'm very very tired, i'm having a bad night at work and FFN was being evil all day and not letting me in...so i'm gonna go set up a baseline coffee drip and be lazy in my notes here...but for all of you who did review, i love you and thanks for taking the time! I swear, i'll give you all a personal shout out before the last chapter!

**Now, you should all know the drill by now...so come on, new people, i just want to know that you're out there! You don't even have to leave feedback, just say hi! And i'll post a new chapter as a way of saying "thanks"!**


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

(Professor X)

With the return of Logan and Angela, only one more piece needed to fall into place before we would be ready to meet the Weapon X army. Mystique reported that she failed to maneuver herself into a position where she would be able to kill the Director before he launched his offensive. However, she had done her part to assist Logan and his wife in their escape from Area 51 with the two little girls now residing in the room next to them, so I instructed her to leave the Yukon facility that was the main mustering point for the army, so she could meet with Mr. Grant. He had the information pertaining to Erik's location and the means to get him out of there. Mr. Bennington had been understandably reluctant to give me that information, but he realizes as much as I do that sometime we must make compromises in order to protect that which we love. For him, it is the country and all of its citizens. I also want that, but my primary concern is and always will be the safety of the children at my school and those who would fall victim to Malcolm Colcord's madness.

However, I fear that I may not live long enough to see my dream realized. Ever since the attack on the mansion, I have been suffering from forebrain hemorrhaging, a common enough malady in those with powerful psychic gifts. But it is also a sign of serious trouble and there are days where the pain is so great that I allow others to take over my duties so that I can rest. I have not told the others yet, as I do not wish to distract them from their preparations for the upcoming conflict. I know that many of them, Scott and Ororo especially, feel that I will always be here. In a way, they are not wrong, for the lessons I have taught them will stay with them and through them, I will live. But I would be lying if I said I was not tempted to have Dr. Lee inject me with the artificial healing factor. He brought several samples with him, to be used in an attempt to solve the adamantium-poisoning problem that so many in the Weapon X army will eventually succumb to. He does not understand fully why I wish for him to continue that work, though the explanation is simple enough.

The majority of those people are not truly evil. Many of them have had their minds worked over, their memories erased, much like Logan. I have no doubt that some of them would have done what they are being asked to do without conditioning, but it is the truly innocent ones that are my main concern. If it is at all possible, I would like to do whatever is in my power to save those people. I know that some of them, perhaps most of them, will die before we can give them that chance. I do not like it, but I am far too old to ignore a truth simply because I find it uncomfortable. So, I will save those who are near and dear to me first, which will in turn allow us to protect the rest of the people in this country and, indeed, the world. As soon as the dust settles, I will worry about the rest.

Yes, I am sorely tempted to use the artificial healing factor, but I do not think I am cut out for such a long life. Those who are born to it, like Logan, Angela and Kyrohyou, are given sufficient time to become accustomed to it. But to come into it at this late stage…no, I will not do it. I will not let my own selfish desires dictate my actions in this regard. So, I will let nature take its course with me and leave my legacy for others to follow. It is enough.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

(Logan)

The next day was Friday, which gave the girls a long weekend to get to know each other better. We explained to Evie exactly who and what Laura was, making sure she knew not to bring it up. So far as we were concerned, she was my daughter and I wasn't going to have her treated as anything else. We also explained Rachel and that she was to be treated as part of the family as well, regardless of where she came from. Evie understood, promising not to talk about their origins unless they brought it up themselves. And although she was technically the middle child in the situation, she was very much the "big sister" to both of them. After all, she'd lived here her entire life and knew all the ins and outs of life at Xavier's. So after breakfast, we let the three of them go better acquainted while Angela and I took care of other business.

For her, that meant going back to the infirmary for a complete pre-natal check. She grumbled that Hank could have taken care of that the night we got back, but he reminded her that there were other things far more important to worry about then. So although she complained, she went willingly enough to the infirmary to be - as she put it - "poked in ways only _you_ should be allowed to do!"

For me, it meant meeting with Chuck and Scott to finish filling in the gaps in their intel regarding the Weapon X army. I could think of a thousand things I would rather be doing, starting with making love to my wife, all the way down to adamantium slivers being forced under my fingernails. But I knew they needed all the information I could give them so we could prepare for the army, even if it meant I had to sit around and put up with Scooter for the next couple hours.

Chuck called out before I even got to the door, which is still the most annoying habit of his that he's got. I went in and glared. "Can't ya just let a guy knock like a normal person?"

"I already knew you were on your way here," he replied with a tired smile, "I simply kept my eye out for you, so to speak."

I sat down in one of the chairs near the window and lit up a cigar, and Scott immediately made a sound of disgust. Yep, I was definitely home. "Logan, do you have to smoke those disgusting things?"

"Sure do. Want one?"

"Not hardly. Those things'll kill you."

"Not me."

"If the two of you are quite finished," Xavier interrupted, sounding annoyed, "can we get to the purpose of this meeting?"

"I really don't see where I can tell ya anythin' ya don't already know," I said, putting my feet up on the windowsill. "I really wish we coulda taken the time to grab files an' stuff, but given the situation we just wanted to get the fuck outta there."

"Yes, Mystique did tell us why you made the decision to leave ahead of your anticipated schedule. Congratulations, by the way."

"Thanks." I tapped the ash off my cigar. "I don't think anyone there had all the pieces 'cept for Colcord an' he ain't talkin'."

"This puts us at a distinct disadvantage. The only hard facts we do have about that army are the ones you trained and the group that the team fought in France."

"Yeah, we caught that." I turned to Scott, who was standing there with his jaw clenched so tight it made _my_ head hurt. "I didn't know anythin' 'bout that til it was all over."

"And where were you at the time, anyway?" Scott asked, his tone accusing.

"The Middle East, sabotagin' a weapons factory an' killin' a General, then waitin' out a sandstorm." I crushed out my cigar and leaned forward. "If I woulda been there, I wouldn't have left survivors."

"So it was what, blind chance that you weren't available for the France job?"

"More like good plannin' on their part. Do ya really think we woulda hurt you guys? We'd have turned on our own men an' let ya capture us. By the time that went down, we were mighty sick o' everythin' an' just wanted it to be over, one way or another."

He at least had the good grace to be ashamed and looked away. "Look, I'm sorry all right? I've just never seen anything like that before. I thought that you and Angela were hard to beat, but thirty of you? And there's two thousand total? Not to mention the Sentinels?" He collapsed on the sofa. "How can we win this?"

"Same way ya win anythin' else; one fight at a time."

"I never wanted this, you know? I never wanted to know the things I know, never wanted to have to plan a strategy that guarantees the complete destruction of the other side. But if we don't kill them, they'll just keep on coming." He covered his face with his hands and sighed. "How do you do it, Logan?"

"What, get ready to kill people?" He looked up. "Cyke, I ain't got an easy answer for ya to that one. Ya just do it, 'cause ya know if ya don't, he'll kill _you_ or someone ya care 'bout. It ain't gettin' ready to do it that's hard; it's livin' with it later."

"That's what I meant. How do you kill someone and still live with yourself?"

"I dunno what ya want me to tell ya. S'been so long since I killed my first man that I barely remember it. An' what you're askin', there just ain't an easy answer. We all deal with it our own way. But there ain't no point agonizin' over killin' someone who's just waitin' to kill you first." I stood up and crossed to the door. "You find a way or ya don't do it. But if you're on the front line with me an' you choke, I'll take ya out myself." I jerked the door open and stalked out of the office and through the lounge to the patio. A group of kids were sitting around one of the white wrought-iron tables, so I continued on across the lawn and into the woods surrounding the estate. I let my instincts choose my path, which unsurprisingly brought me out by the river. But I didn't stay on the mansion side; I crossed to the other, wilder side and let the trees and brush over there swallow me whole.

I passed through the foliage without really disturbing it, a shadow given form, with no clear idea of where I was going. I just knew I had to put as much space between me and Cyclops as I could, because I didn't want to think about the things he'd asked me. Asking how I deal with the aftermath of killing someone is like asking me how my claws work. I can't explain it, I just do it. But it also brought to mind the conversation between Chuck and Angela the morning we got back.

I don't think either one of us can ever truly be considered "safe". This thing we have inside us isn't a rational, thinking being. It really and truly is an animal, with no conscience, no emotions, nothing to keep it from giving in to the three things it really wants to do: hunt, kill, mate. Those things are always there in some small part even when we don't let the animal loose, but for the most part we're in control. We can choose not to act on any of those impulses and usually, that's what we do. Well, except for mate. Most of the time.

But when the animal takes over, it's another story. We don't see anything except for weaker creatures to be taken down, something that hurt us and brought about the rage that pushes all other thought and emotion aside. The whole world is seen through a scarlet haze and it really does feel very _free_. No connection, no conscience, nothing but the hunt and the kill. The feeling of complete liberation is indescribable and it would be so easy to let it run and never worry about reining it back in.

I used to think of it as this bad thing I had inside me, this monster that I had to fight back every minute of every day. But I was wrong. It's nothing more than another part of me, the part that makes it possible for me and those who are like me to make the hard decision, to do what is necessary when no one else is able to do it. It is the part that makes it so I can live with the things I've done, because otherwise I will descend into madness and never return. I know I have done terrible things for no reason other than I was ordered to do them. No matter what the reasons were for going back there, nothing I will ever do will make up for those things.

I stopped walking when I came to another stream, a small tributary for the larger river at the back of the mansion. I'd never been this far into this part of the forest and I paused to look around. It was a pretty place, peaceful, the only sounds that of the water tumbling over the rocks, the breeze in the trees around me. I knelt down and closed my eyes, my hands loose on my knees, focusing inward to clear my mind. I don't know how long I stayed there, meditating to the sound of flowing water, but I was suddenly aware of a scent that didn't belong, a scent that set off every alarm in my head. But I didn't move, didn't even open my eyes, didn't tense a single muscle. I simply waited for the other to make a move, so I could make mine.

The attack came from above, as I expected, and I twisted out of the way at the last possible moment, popping my claws and spinning to face my opponent. "They send you alone, Vulture?" I asked, not really caring if he was really alone or not. "They that strapped for people these days?"

"Screw you, Wolverine," he replied, folding his wings close to his body. "The Director isn't stupid. He knew you'd come back here."

"So what is this, an attempt to get us back? Think again, bub. We _played_ you."

He seemed genuinely surprised as he circled with me. "What the hell you talking about? Everyone knows you came back just long enough to extract Phoenix and X-23. Getting Dr. Lee in the bargain was just a bonus."

"Your brain really is turnin' into solid metal, ain't it? The kids an' the doc were both the bonus."

"And what was the prize supposed to be? Asp and Tigress? I don't know how you killed them, but it won't work on me."

"Nah, they were a bonus too. The prize was Colcord's head on a platter, but we had to leave 'fore we got that far."

"So was that the plan? Xavier sent you guys in to assassinate him before he could finish what he started?"

"Xavier had nothin' to do with it. We went back 'cause that son of a bitch was responsible for our daughter's death." He really didn't need to know she was alive and I wasn't about to tell him. "An' we still owe him for that."

"Sorry to burst your bubble, Wolverine, but that isn't going to happen. I'm not here to bring you in. I'm here to take you out." He lunged forward with incredible speed, but I was faster and dodged beneath his claws even as I buried mine in his side. He snarled in pain and snapped his wings open, then used them to beat me. I rolled and came up behind him, kicking the back of his knee and bringing him down. Before he could recover, I shoved my claws clean through his left shoulder, perfectly placed in the joint. With a snarl of my own, I ripped my hand upward and separated his arm from the rest of him. "Motherfucker!" he shouted and fell to the ground.

I was on top of him before he could move, my fist pressed against his other shoulder. "Talk to me or you'll lose the other one."

"Fuck you!"

"Yer a real poet, ya know that?" I looked him over and decided to change tactics, sliding out a single claw and pressing it against his right ear. "How 'bout I just start carvin' off the soft bits til ya tell me everythin' I wanna know? That sound better to you?"

"You wouldn't."

I shrugged and with a tiny flick of my wrist I cut his ear off. He screamed in agony again and I popped a single claw on my other hand and pressed it against the left ear. "Ya know, once I'm done with your ears, your nose an' your eyes, there's only one thing left to lose." I noticed that the bleeding from his stump was already starting to slow, but I didn't know if he'd simply grow another arm or heal over the area. Either way, I was running out of time. "It's your call bub."

Faced with losing his most precious bits, Vulture sang as pretty as any canary. Once I was satisfied that I'd learned everything of value, I did the only thing I could do and divested him of his head. No matter how good we are, I have yet to meet a mutant with a healing factor good enough to make them survive without a head. I tossed the offending thing into the woods and started back towards the mansion at a trot. Maybe I could have left him alive, but I didn't want him going back to Colcord and telling him anything about this place. And what he'd just told me might make all the difference in the world.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Did you have to decapitate him?" Scott grumbled as I filled the teams in on what Vulture had told me.

"What have I told you 'bout leavin' people alive, Cyke?" I asked, glaring at him. He may have changed a lot since we'd left, but some lessons die hard and in him, they die even harder.

"Oh, I know!" Kitty piped in. "Never leave an enemy behind you that could get back up to finish you off, especially if he's better equipped that you are."

Scott scowled at her, but she simply returned his gaze. "But he wasn't better equipped than you, Logan. According to the files, you heal better and his natural weaponry was no match for yours."

"Yeah, 'cept the part where he could fly an' coulda come back 'round, flew over here an' done God only knows what before the alarm sounded." I took a long drag off my cigar to calm myself. "Not to mention, he couldn't have been alone, no matter what he told me. Demon's 'round here somewhere, I just haven't been able to sniff 'im out yet."

"And there could be others," Angela added. "We know they had at least one shapeshifter, at least on par with Mystique before they bonded his skeleton. It's possible he had others and they could be here right now."

"We haven't accepted any new students since mid-term last year," Bobby said. "Hell, it's been so long since we had a genuine runaway turn up, the new kids are shocked to find out how many of us were back in the day."

"An' at mid-term, we were still trainin' 'em." I nodded and stubbed out my smoke. "Still, we haveta keep our eyes open for his backup. If there's one thing I know for sure, it's that w…they're always sent out in teams o' two, minimum." Damn! It was going to take me a while to get used the part where I was no longer a Weapon X operative. "But no matter how many pieces I left that asshole in, I'm positive his information is sound."

"Yes, I believe you were just getting to that when Scott interrupted," Xavier said dryly. 'Though I do tend to agree that decapitation may have been a bit…excessive,' he said in my mind.

'Wasn't takin' the chance he'd get up an' hurt someone here just for spite,' I shot back. 'Too late now anyway.'

'Indeed it is. Please, continue.'

I sighed and looked over the room. "Vulture confirmed that Colcord's got around two thousand fully augmented mutants," I began, but was again interrupted by Scott.

"How many exactly?"

I glared, but went on. "One thousand, nine hundred, ninety-five, now that he's dead. But he also said he's got around five hundred partially augmented mutants that he's plannin' to send out too. An' before you ask, he didn't have a hard number, all right?" No one said anything, so I went on. "The plan is to divide the partials into four units an' send 'em with the others, also in four units. He didn't know where the units will be deployed, only that he was savin' the White House, the Pentagon and this school for the final wave."

"He doesn't expect any opposition to last long enough to stop him," the Professor said softly. "He must have an ace up his sleeve that we haven't figured out yet."

"Bingo. An' I'm almost afraid to find out what it is." I looked everyone over and dropped my theory on them like a bomb. "I think he's got Sentinels an' not just what he was able to repair after the Outback mission. He had another Master Mold in the works back then an' there's no reason for us to believe he hasn't finished it by now."

"There's something you're not telling us," Storm said quietly, rubbing her stomach absently. "You're worried about something else and you're deliberately keeping it from us."

"Darlin', you know me. I ain't one to sit here an' speculate. Do I have other worries here? Fuck yeah I do. But we ain't got the time to sit here playin' 'what if' when there's shit we know for certain is comin' for us."

"He's right," Scott said, surprising the hell out of me. "We can prepare for the worst, like we always do, but right now we have to focus on the target we already have." He moved to the center of the room and crossed his arms. "But regardless of what our plan will be, I would like to ask Charles to consider forming an Omega team."

I didn't think I could get any more surprised and by the looks on everyone's faces, they hadn't expected this either. "Scott, we haven't had a real need for that in quite some time," Xavier said. "Might I ask why?"

"Colcord isn't going to be satisfied with sitting back and reading the reports from the front lines. He'll be with one of the units so he can see his handiwork firsthand. Taking him out should be a top priority."

"I get what you're saying Scott, but I have to disagree," Angela said. "He'd never risk himself just for the brief satisfaction of seeing his troops in action."

"Maybe not at first, but if we can trust the things this Vulture said, we already know what his three biggest targets are going to be. And since he lost his first bid for the White House that didn't require two other people to die for him to get it…" He let the sentence trail off, no need to finish.

But Sarah, of all people, voiced a different opinion. "No, he won't be there," she said, eyes narrowed in concentration, her hair moving ever so slightly. "He'll come here."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because his two favorite weapons got away and came here with his two favorite toys. Not to mention the one that got away and never went back."

All eyes shifted between me, Totem and Angela, and I realized she was right. His troops could burn the White House, blast the Pentagon to hell and back, but he'd want to be here to watch as they took out the one place the three of us would gladly die to protect. And, if he was supremely lucky, kill us in the bargain. "Well then, that changes everythin', doesn't it?"

"What's that mean?" Scott asked.

"It means we'll have to turn the tables on him. If the mountain will not come to Mohammed…" I spread my hands and shrugged. "We got the two most powerful telepaths in the world in this house, not to mention two precogs. Between 'em, they should be able to find anyone, anywhere."

"Two of those people are _children_, Logan! You can't mean to use them like that!"

"I know those girls, Cyke. One of 'em never had a chance to _be_ a child, the other one's mine. An' both of 'em have powers we're gonna need, like it or not."

"Evie's already seen some of this anyway," Angela added. "All we need is a time and a location. We'll take care of the rest."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Ya know Hank's never gonna let ya go." Angela and I were snuggled up in bed, Evie asleep in her own room adjoining ours. "He'll find some way to try an' keep you here."

"He can try all he wants," she replied, toying with my chest hair. "But I still owe Colcord, for Emma, for what he did to me, did to you. I won't be left out of that, no matter the cost."

"Even this?" I asked, resting my hand lightly on her belly. The baby was still too small for even me to detect, but I still knew he was in there.

She swallowed hard and nodded. "I'm sorry, Logan, but we can always have another one."

"It took us over ten years to get ya pregnant again, darlin'. I dunno that I wanna wait that long again."

"And I don't know how many more times I can even _get_ pregnant again, but that's not the point. We already have one absolutely perfect child together. How many more could you possibly want?"

"A dozen?" She slapped my chest and I laughed. "Seriously though, I don't want anything to happen to him. Or her." I rolled over so we were facing each other and stroked her forehead. "Or you."

"What if I promise to stay out of everything else? I'll stay here at the mansion for any other missions against that army and evacuate with the kids when the time comes."

"You'd do that?"

"If that's what it takes to be there when that bastard dies? Hell yes."

I couldn't argue with that logic, even if deep down I did want her to stay out of all of it. But she had a very valid point; she did owe Colcord for everything he'd done to her more than I owed him for what he did to me. I hadn't lost any children to him – yet. "All right. I'll make sure you're there."

She smiled slightly, then leaned in and kissed me. I slipped my hands underneath her tank top even as her hands wandered over me. We made love slowly, letting things build up and back off over the next several hours, until neither one of us could hold back any longer. It had been so long since we'd been able to do this without feeling like we were stealing moments in between horrors and it made everything that much more intense. We drifted off to sleep, sweaty and satisfied, and my last thought was, once again, how good it was to be home. I desperately wanted the sweetness to last, but in our lives that never happens and this was no exception.

* * *

**AN:** Whatever do i have up my sleeve? Bwahahahahahahaha! Well, you'll just have to keep reading to find out...:) Special thanks to my beta reader Turiel Tincdaniel, for keeping me in line...:) Super special thanks to everyone who's been reading...and Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were theNightEnchantress, LifeBringsMeOnlyTears, Andromeda Jones and TnTornado...'Tears and Miss Jones: That's why i gave a tissue alert:) Addendum to Miss Jones: Green huh? That's AWESOME! I'm thinking about purple, just to be obnoxious, but i'll probably just keep it red...Mr. Tornado: I'm glad you liked it! We'll see what happens with the girls...:)

Now, just so's you all know, i'm getting ready for this year's round of **NaNoWriMo**...if you don't know what it is, there's a link in my profile that takes you to the site that explains it in depth...but it stands for "National Novel Writing Month", which is from November 1 to November 30...it's a challenge to write 50,000 words of original fiction in 30 days...:) But i'm getting a head start on other things, like research and notes, so i can focus more on writing and less on looking shit up this year...if this is something you think you might be interested in, i've started a forum here at FFN for us to use, so we can bitch, moan, complain or vent to people who are a little "closer" to us than the people in the forums at the official site...not that they aren't great, but at least here, we have this site in common...anyway, the link to that is also in my profile under "my forums" if you're interested...:)

**Now, if you've never reviewed my stories before, just click the little "go" button and say hello...you don't have to give me feedback or anything if you don't want to...i just wanna know who all is out there:)**


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

(Angela)

Two days later, Storm went into labor. Fortunately, Dr. Owens had already received all of her records from the doctor she'd seen while at the safe house and was on hand to come to the mansion when the time came. I was unexpectedly touched when she asked me to be in the room with her and Sam for the delivery, but she pointed out that she'd been there for me and couldn't think of anyone else she wanted to help her through it. "Besides," she said, "I can squeeze your hand as much as I want and I won't break it!" When battered about the head with that logic, I couldn't refuse.

But I found myself supremely jealous of her since she could have an epidural and have it work for more than an hour or so, whereas I would have to suffer through another delivery in a few months with nothing more than cussing and Logan to get me through it. Anyway, her water broke just before lunch and by dinner, she was already pushing. Hank assisted Dr. Owens, who delivered a healthy and absolutely gorgeous baby girl at precisely eight forty-five that night, named Jade Elizabeth Levison. I left the happy family a little after nine and went in search of my own. I found the four of them in the lounge watching a movie with some of the other kids and as soon as I entered, all eyes turned to me. "Well?" Logan asked, clearly impatient.

"Well what?" I asked innocently, settling on his lap without waiting for an invitation.

He growled. "Don't f…play with me here! Is it over?"

I smiled mischievously. "I honestly have no idea what you're talking about." Everyone groaned and I was showered in a hail of popcorn and thrown pillows. I dodged the larger missiles as well as I could, laughing. "It's a girl!" A huge cheer went up and Evie whooped in delight. I know she had purposely never tried to see what Storm would be having, but had told me that she really wanted it to be a girl so she had someone to pass all of her "girly baby things" on to. She'd already given Laura most of her outgrown clothes, though it seemed obvious that the younger girl wasn't going to be as tall as my daughter. I remembered that her "mother" had been code named Minx, but we had never met her or heard anything about her at Area 51 and I wondered, not for the first time, if she was even still alive. In a way, I hoped she wasn't, because I didn't want to learn that she was a part of the army that we were going to have to destroy.

It took us a bit to calm everyone down, but they came back to earth as soon as Logan pointed out that every bit of thrown popcorn better be cleaned up or there would be extra laps for everyone before defense the following morning. This brought forth another groan from those who had been here the previous year and had suffered through his classes, though the newer kids had no idea. Several of the non-mutant kids took defense as well, though they weren't being taught with the mutants for the most part. This was partly because a large portion of defense is spent learning how to use powers along with the regular hand-to-hand moves, but also partly because they would never be invited to be X-Men. I know a few of them were disappointed about that, but we felt it was best to keep non-mutants off the team for the time being. It's not that some of them weren't skilled or talented, but because we were afraid they would become the primary targets if they were thrown into a combat situation against mutants. But we also let them all know that our primary concern was for their safety and that it had nothing to do with their lack of powers. After all, Sage (for example) is a valuable member of the team and her primary mutation is her "computer brain", as we called it. Once it was put to them that way, it went down a bit easier, though I know many of them didn't like it.

I _was_ very pleased that the mutant and non-mutant students mingled well with one another, something that had been worrying me the summer before. It has always been a dream of the Professor's that the school be used as a bridge between mutants and normal humans, because children have fewer prejudices about people who are different. But as I looked over the lounge I saw a girl with webbed fingers who could apparently breathe underwater sitting with a boy that I'd been told was not a mutant and they were very cozy indeed. Just a few short years ago, something like that would have been not just unexpected, but unthinkable. So much had changed and the proof was sitting here before me.

"Amazin', ain't it?" Logan whispered, pulling me close to him.

"What's that lover?"

He nodded at the kids I'd just been looking at. "Seein' somethin' like that. Never thought I'd see it as long as I lived."

I shrugged and laid my head on his shoulder. "The badness couldn't last forever."

"Yeah, but I really thought it wouldn't happen without a lot more bloodshed."

"The bleeding isn't over, Logan. There's still an army out there to contend with, the asshole who built it, the Sentinels and gods only know what else."

"I know. But look at 'em. They're the future darlin', not Colcord or any o' the other idiots out there. These kids are the ones that'll make all the difference in the end."

I smiled and kissed him on the cheek. He was right, of course, even if we did still have an army bearing down on us and a lunatic to dispose of. I know it sounds like a cheesy cliché, but the children really _are_ the future and all we could hope to do was create a world they wouldn't mind inheriting. But I'm not that much of an optimist; I knew they would have their work cut out for them, once their parents' generation was long gone. It's one of the many reasons I look at my so-called gift as more of a curse than anything. I'd seen the world go through so many changes, and yet everything was still much the same. The thought of holing up in the cabin and waiting for a better human to evolve looked more attractive every day.

But I couldn't indulge in such thoughts. I could only focus on one problem at a time and right now that was the army. We'd kept it from the students as much as we could, but they're not stupid. They watch the news, they all knew what had happened to Scott and except for the youngest of them, they all had at least some idea of what was going on and why. Only those in strategy and tactics got the full story, since many of the scenarios they'd been doing centered on the army and now that I was back (and pregnant, so not allowed to do Danger Room), they would only get more difficult. After all, I had firsthand knowledge of at least a portion of the army, so it would be simple enough for me to program what I knew and see how they handled it. For Beta and Delta, it might not be so bad, but Gamma was in for a rude awakening.

Finally, the movie was over, every kernel of popcorn cleaned up and we sent the kids to bed. Rachel and Laura wanted to have a sleepover with Evie, but we had to tell them "no" since it was a school night. They all grumbled, but accepted it gracefully enough. The next day would be Rachel and Laura's first day of classes, which would be a new experience for both of them. I was pretty sure they'd do all right, since they'd been tutored somewhat while still under Colcord's control, but I also feared they'd be behind in some essential areas. But I made sure that Rachel especially knew not to use her powers to cheat or try to get ahead. Neither girl understood why we were making them go to classes in the first place, since school would be out in three weeks, but Logan and I felt it was important for them to get used to a classroom setting as soon as possible. They would both receive quite a bit of private instruction over the summer, the army notwithstanding, to ensure they wouldn't be behind when fall came.

Later on, after Evie was asleep and I was snuggled up into Logan's side, I took a moment to reflect on the entire previous year. Part of me wondered if we'd made the right choice, going back there the way we did. We'd known since the Death Valley mission all those years ago that Area 51 was a trap, but maybe we'd have been better off hitting it back then anyway. We could have saved ourselves so much pain and misery, saved ourselves having to grieve for a child that had never really been gone. We could have extracted Phoenix and made plans to do the same for X-23, yet we'd taken what Rogue learned from Carol Danvers to heart and left the place alone.

How far could we have set Colcord back if we'd done that? How many people would still be alive today, having never been subjected to the initial testing of the artificial healing factor? And that doesn't even take into account the people we'd killed in the line of "duty". Some of them honestly deserved it, like the ones in Central America who'd had all those mutants held hostage for their own private war. But there were others, many others, who perhaps hadn't deserved it and those were the souls weighing heavily on my conscience.

"Penny for your thoughts," Logan said quietly as he stroked my back.

"Mm, are they worth that much?"

"More'n that, but a penny's all I've got right now." The exchange was old and familiar, yet we never tired of it. "Whatcha thinkin' 'bout?"

"Just stuff. If we did the right thing, if we could have saved more if we'd not gone back." I leaned up and looked him in the eye. "If we really are safe."

"'Course we're safe. We're back here an' ya just can't get any safer."

"Not like that. I mean us." He still looked confused, so I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair. "I've been thinking about the meeting we had the other day, to plan our attack on that army. What if the ace up Colcord's sleeve isn't a metric shitload of Sentinels, but me and you?"

He sat up as well and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. "Darlin', if there was even the slightest chance we were a danger, Chuck woulda asked us to leave right after we got back. We were out for how long after he triggered our memories? Eight hours? Do ya really think he didn't use that chance to scan us inside an' out?"

"He buried ten years of our lives. What's to say one of Colcord's people didn't bury something much simpler? A trigger word or something? We were in sensory dep for how long? I hallucinated in there, Logan. I could hear you just out of my reach but when I'd reach out, you weren't there. How much of that was in my mind and how much was put there?" I sighed and scrubbed my face, too tired to worry about this, but too worried about it to sleep. "We could still be there for all I know and I'm just completely off my rocker."

"The only telepath he had that coulda pulled somethin' like that off is sleepin' right next door. An' I would bet my life that she's as sincere 'bout the things she said as we are."

"But are you willing to bet everyone else's lives too?"

"We ain't got a _choice_. But if it'll make ya feel better, we can have Chuck rummage 'round our heads tomorrow an' prove to ya once an' for all that we're all right."

I nodded and he lay back down, pulling me with him. But I still didn't sleep for a long time, even after his breathing had slowed and he was long gone in the land of dreams. I know he and I felt the same about this, that we'd rather die than put the people here at risk. Our presence was quite bad enough and the only thing that made me relax at all was that we had taught these people well how to defeat us, just in case. I only hoped they wouldn't have to find out how they'd do if it was for real.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Angela, I assure you, no one left any surprises in there," Charles said the next day after I insisted he scan us. "You forget that only the most skilled of telepaths can do the sort of thing you asked me to do and to be perfectly honest, Colcord doesn't have anyone powerful enough to fool me for long."

"Charles, I respect the fact that you are the most skilled telepath I know, even if you're no longer the most powerful," I replied, twisting my hands in my lap. "But his telepaths left surprises in there once before, with the whole Totem thing. What's to say they didn't do it again?"

"Because Colcord's people do not have the skill I do. Admittedly, the one who'd meddled with your mind previously is now dead, but unless they have a very delicate touch, they will leave a kind of psychic fingerprint behind. And I have detected no such traces in you or Logan."

"What about Rachel? Could she have done it?"

"Rachel is very powerful, I'll give you that, but her powers are not fully developed and she does not have the level of skill I do. Yes, I did sense that she'd been in your mind, but the traces are very old. It is my opinion those are from the scan she did of you when they attempted to kidnap your daughter and from the initial scans she did of both of you when you first arrived at Area 51."

"And you're certain no one ever suspected that you intentionally buried our memories? That no one got in there and messed around?"

He leaned forward and took my hand. "Angela, I promise, nothing of the sort happened. The memories that came back to you are the same ones that I repressed. Nothing unusual came forth and I sensed no one else's presence in your mind other than Rachel. Is it possible that someone detected me in your mind? Naturally. You lived here for more than a decade and they have to know that I'd been in your mind during that time. So they would have been unable to determine that the blank spot in the back had anything to do with me." He smiled, but it looked a bit tired to me. "After all, that blank spot is always there. I simply added to it."

"Always there?" I asked, a bit confused.

"Yes. All mutants with feral qualities have it. It's the part of your mind that controls and operates on your basic, primal instincts. A skilled telepath like myself could access it, but would find nothing of use in there simply because there is no conscious thought to be seen. That part of you doesn't work the same way as your conscious mind."

I sighed and felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. "So when Rachel told Logan that we both had a hole in our minds, that's what she saw?"

"Most certainly. She had probably not been used much before that on the other operatives, mostly because they'd already been fully conditioned before she was even born. And all of them are much younger than you and Logan, so your blank spot is more developed, your instinctive side much stronger than theirs. I do not yet know if the adamantium poisoning that's affecting them slows the development of their instinctive side, but it is certainly possible."

"Charles, you are my second most favorite man on the planet," I said, leaning over and giving him a warm kiss on the cheek.

"Again, you flatter me my dear. But if this gave you some peace of mind, it was my pleasure." The clock chimed in the corner, signaling the end of the lunch hour. "Now I believe you have a class to teach."

"Yeah, I sure do. Thank you." He smiled at me and I left his office. Groups of kids were loitering here and there in the halls, talking about all the normal things you'd expect school aged kids to talk about – girls, boys, clothes, cars, classes – and I swelled with pride at how far some of the had come. I knew many of them well, since I'd been teaching and training them for years before I'd left with my husband in an attempt to bring down the greatest threat to mutants. But there were plenty I didn't know at all, especially the non-mutant kids. I'd heard from Sarah and Scott that a handful of them were actually taking the strategy and tactics classes, which shocked the living hell out of me. But they'd explained that the few who were in there were doing so because they wanted to become something entirely new in the world, something no one could have ever anticipated.

It's well known that the government has several publicly known agencies whose only purpose is to enforce the law and protect the country – FBI, CIA, NSA – but none of them have departments that are dedicated to helping mutants. Oh sure, there has been a lot of progress in regards to mutant rights, but the government is a bureaucracy and getting positive changes made to those agencies is a slow process. But this handful of human children wanted to change that. Once they graduated from Xavier's, they planned to go on to college and get degrees in criminal justice, law, or even join the military, so they could eventually move on to those agencies and be the beginnings of a specialized division that would handle mutant issues as they come up. Because if there's one thing they were learning here, it's that not all mutants are evil, but not all of them are like the kids here at Xavier's either. Just like regular people, most mutants fall somewhere in between, just wanting to live their lives in the best way possible. Only a few of the students at this school want to be X-Men or even have what it takes, but just like the Magnetos of this world they were the exception, not the rule. So these regular kids wanted to be the exception too, even if they couldn't wear the uniform of an X-Man. They could move on to wear other uniforms and still do work just as important as any rescue we would go on.

I walked into the classroom only a few minutes late and all eyes turned to me. Sarah was up front, setting up the scenario for the week and smiled when she saw me. "Ah, Mrs. Logan! Class, I'd like you to meet your real teacher for this class, Angela Logan, code named Hellcat. I'm sure many of you know she was on a secret assignment all these months, but she's recently returned and will be taking over for the rest of the year."

"Thank you, Medusa," I replied and walked to the front. A few kids whispered to themselves and I caught such comments as "she's so little!", "I hear she's a real badass!" and "did you know she's an assassin?", amongst other things. But some of my old students smiled and waved, so I waved back and settled in at the front of the room. "Before we begin today, I see there are many new faces here. Since this is an extended period today, we'll take a little bit and you can get all your questions about me out of the way before we begin, all right?"

So for the first half an hour, I fielded a number of questions that were very similar to those I'd answered over ten years before. Logan was doing the same thing in defense today, because we'd caught wind of some pretty funny rumors in the few short days we'd been home and wanted to put an end to them. Unlike at Area 51, we didn't want the people here to fear us to keep them in line, we wanted them to respect us and like us for who we are. Rogue told Logan once, long ago, that he was their hero because he protected them, but I was their hero because I didn't. What she meant by that is that I won't lie or sugar-coat anything, because in the end it does more harm than good. So even though I refused to tell them anything about where I'd been or what I'd been doing all year, I didn't hold back on anything else. A couple of the normal students seemed a bit freaked out that I'd been an assassin, though they tried not to let it show. But some of my older students caught that thread and asked other questions they already knew the answers to, just for their benefit. Yes, I'm an assassin, but not anymore. Yes, I've killed people and I would do it again, but not just for fun, never just for fun. Once they seemed satisfied, I explained how I used all the training I'd received as an infiltrator to set up this class and moved on to the scenario.

"I'm sure you've heard a bit about the latest threat to us all," I began, punching a couple keys on my computer. A map popped up on the overhead display that was new since I'd left, but Sarah had showed me how to use it. "Everyone knows about Wolverine, Totem and me, how we were augmented and the things we were used for. Those of you planning to become X-Men know a bit more than that, but I'm going to tell all of you everything."

A hand went up in the back and I checked the seating chart. "Mary Anne, right?"

The girl nodded. "Yeah. Some of the stuff we heard, it seems…I don't know, kinda like science fiction or something."

I chuckled and leaned against the edge of the desk. "Says the girl who is a student at mutant high." A polite titter rolled through the class, but they settled down fast enough. "Yes, it does seem very unlikely. But you've also been here long enough to know that anything is possible, both good and bad. I wish I could be one of the teachers that tells you all about the good things, but I'm not. My job is to prepare you for the worst possible things. I've looked over the stuff that Medusa's been going over with you and I am impressed. But today we're going to learn about something that's really coming."

I went back behind the desk and punched a few more keys, sending basic specs on the fraction of the army I knew about and the Sentinels. "If you would all please page through that for a few minutes, I'll get to the rest when you're finished." They settled in to look at what they had and I could hear the whispering start up again. Most of the comments were of the "holy shit!" variety, though a few grew quieter, even grim. Once I thought they'd had enough time, I moved back in front of the desk. "As you can see, there are a lot more people like Wolverine, Totem and me. What you have before you is only a fraction of those we know about and I haven't given you all the information. You should already be familiar with working scenarios involving Sentinels, but they are actually the least of your worries."

"Mrs. Logan?" A tentative voice called out and I checked my chart again.

"Stefan, right?" He nodded. "You have a question?"

"The only thing we know about these new mutants is that they all have healing factors and metal skeletons like you, but not the rest of their powers. Why?"

"Because there's two thousand of them and I don't know what their powers are. Yes, I know the powers of these few, but this isn't supposed to be an easy class. So, this is your assignment." I brought the map back up and zoomed in on an area of about six city blocks. "These mutants, accompanied by no less than eight Sentinels and an unknown number of normal human troops is approaching this area, presumably to hunt and destroy a group of mutants in hiding. Their powers are unknown except for the healing factor and the augmented skeleton. Your mission is to deploy two teams of X-Men to counter this attack."

"Why only two?" That was an older student of mine, Paige Guthrie – Cannonball's sister, oddly enough – code named Husk.

"Because this is only one attack group that we know of. Also, keep in mind that Storm is not permitted to go in the field because she has a newborn to take care of."

"What about you?" I whipped my head around to where Sarah was still sitting at the other desk that Logan or Totem sometimes occupied.

"Until otherwise noted, I have not been taken out of field consideration." I turned back to the class. "However, you also are not permitted to send Wolverine, Totem and me on the same team." A collective groan went up and I looked down to hide a smirk. Once I'd composed myself, I looked back up. "You should all know that it's not smart to put all your best people on the same team. So spread us out." I checked the clock and set the timer on the computer. "You have fifty minutes left for today, let's see how you do."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

By the end of the day, my classes hadn't done too badly. I knew that by the end of the week, the kids in the different classes would have compared notes and tried to come up with a single strategy that worked the best, even if that wasn't what I wanted. What I didn't have the heart to tell them was that _I_ didn't even have a strategy worked out for this scenario that got everyone home alive and in one piece. The best I'd been able to do still had about a quarter of us coming home dead or gravely wounded. Logan and Totem had fared no better and this worried us. With only a fraction of the intel we needed, we couldn't plan for all of them. And there were no guarantees that the hundred plus people we'd trained personally would be sent as a single unit. Colcord's evil, but he's also smart and he wouldn't want to give us anything we could anticipate.

So that's why I set up the scenario the way I did. No one in there would know the full capabilities of the mutants involved until we got into the Danger Room with them. The non-mutant students would be in the observation booth directing the action, which would consist of both real and virtual X-Men, depending on availability. Since we still hadn't been able to go over everything we _did_ know with all the teams, there would still be plenty of surprises when we got that far at the end of the week.

Late Thursday night, I was going over the different scenarios and choosing the ones I wanted to do first when the internal phone rang on the nightstand next to me. Logan groaned and pulled a pillow over his head while I picked it up. "Yeah?"

"Angela, it's Sage. I'm in the security office. You better get down here."

"Why? What's wrong? Is someone on the grounds?" Logan uncovered his head and sat up.

"No, there isn't. Just get down here, all right?" She hung up and I dropped the phone back in the cradle.

"Darlin', what's wrong?" Logan asked as I climbed out of bed and pulled on a pair of sweats. "Need me to come with ya?"

"No, stay here," I replied, pulling my hair into a loose ponytail. "If I need you, I'll call."

"You sure?" I nodded and he grabbed me as I walked past him, pulling me into a kiss. "Be careful."

"Logan, I'm going to the basement, not the Middle East." He chuckled and swatted me playfully, and I left the room.

I rushed to the security office downstairs, knowing that Sage would have never called me if it wasn't important. And it couldn't be the army on the move, because she would have called a general silent alert, not called me personally on the internal line. I took the elevator down to the lower level and walked quickly to the security office. "Sage, what's wrong?"

"Look at this." I sat in the chair next to her as she called something up on the terminal in front of me. "I just got this ten minutes ago, triple encoded." An email popped up on the screen.

_Sage or Buzzkill, heads way up!_

_Saw sumthing u won't believe. Got a pic, cost me dear. Gettin' the hell outta here, but thought u might wanna see this. Reminds me of that thing u were lookin' 4 a few years ago, eh? And remember this - 'net maps ain't worth a shit and ur gonna have at least one wrong turn that gets u in trouble._

I raised an eyebrow at the end. "A-Dawg?"

"Short for Atomic Dawg. You know, like that song by P-Funk?" Sage replied, loading up something else.

"Well, I can see that he stumbled on to something big but…whoa." I sat back, unable to breathe for a split second. On the screen in front of me appeared a photograph of row upon row of giant Sentinels, at least two hundred of them, with at least five times that many of the smaller ones. She clicked again and the picture changed to what looked like any other military unit on maneuvers, perhaps a field exercise of some sort, except that at least a dozen of the people that were in the shot were obviously airborn without assistance. "Where are these from?"

"The Yukon. A-Dawg just posted to one of the boards I belong to that he was going on vacation. He takes nature photos for a hobby, he's even sold a few here and there. This is the last pic he sent."

She called up one last photo of what appeared to be a smoking crater, until I looked closer and realized it was far too big to be a mere hole in the ground. "Wh-what is this?"

"He sent me these just after he posted to the board that his usual stopover up there was gone. The message and the pics came through Fairy Godmother." I stared at her in shock. Fairy Godmother was the secure machine we'd used to maintain contact with the safe houses back in the days when the underground was a necessary evil. We'd never taken it offline, on the off chance that someone might need it, but it mostly gathered dust and we hadn't had a truly important message in over ten years. "He mostly uses a digital camera and as soon as he got these, he transferred them to his computer and sent them."

"Wait, what do you mean his stopover was gone?"

"Just what he said. He said it wasn't really a town, more like a wide place in the road with a gas station, a restaurant called 'Eat' and not much else. But there was a family who helped him out a few years back when his car broke down and he always visited with them because they were cool. They were also mutants."

"So what are you trying to say? Colcord overran everything to get to a handful of people?"

She nodded, her face grim. "Yeah, I am. And he was coming down a little logging road, so they didn't have anyone posted to stop traffic before he got a couple shots off. By the time anyone saw him there, he'd already palmed the memory card and they took his camera. He said he talked his way out of it, mostly because they didn't have anyone with them who spoke French well enough to know what he was saying, except that he was lost. They escorted him to the northern perimeter, he got himself up on a hill and got the other pictures later on a really nice thousand millimeter digital he had hidden in the trunk under the spare tire."

I clenched my jaw, then made an executive decision and hit the silent alert. "They're on the move. We've got work to do."

* * *

**AN:** Teeheehee! Now the fun really starts, eh:) Special thanks to my beta reader, Turiel Tincdaniel, for making sure my spelling and grammar don't suck completely...:) Extra Special thanks to my readers, just for reading...and Super Swanky Special thanks to my lone reviewers, who was Andromeda Jones...:) Miss Jones: Hope your grandma had a good birthday! Was this update soon enough for you?

Also, if anyone out there is interested in trying out **NaNoWriMo** this year (go to www DOT nanowrimo DOT org for more info), i've started a forum for us FFN people to get support from people we might feel more comfortable bitching to...the link for that is in my profile...:) Hope to see you there!

**Now, if you've not reviewed before, why not give it a try? As a reward (coughbribecough), i'll post a new chapter right away:)**


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

(Logan)

Week one:

Colcord's army hit two more places. No rhyme or reason, no pattern we can see. Asked the Prof. if he had any clues, says he can't track them with Cerebro. So far, the army is still in one unit. Can't last long, too many of them to keep hidden if he hits a less populated area. Evie hasn't seen anything and I don't want to ask her to. She's just a little kid for fuck's sake and she shouldn't have to deal with all of this already. But I might not have a choice.

Angela's not throwing up anymore, that's a good thing. But she's already getting a little belly and it's pissing her off. I told her to lay off the late night snacking and she just says the baby has my appetite. Maybe it means this one's a boy.

Scott thinks we can't get close to the army 'cause of Phoenix, who I have to remind him is named Rachel every damn day. He thinks she's a mole, I think she's a scared little kid. She offered to take the suppression drugs again and that seemed to shut him up. We'll see how long it lasts.

Finally got a message from Mystique. She's got Magneto and they're on the way here. They have to lay low, travel at night and can't take anything too public. Said she found him in the middle of Utah. Almost feel sorry for the guy for that. Almost.

Might have to have Bennington assign us a satellite or two to get pictures from all over, so we can see where the hell that army is. I hate thinking that we're a step behind, but we really are. So far, there hasn't been enough of anything left to fill a thimble and that worries me more than I'm willing to admit. Unless Evie has a dream or that McKenzie woman, we're fucked.

Week two:

Four more targets, two at the same time. He's finally split his forces and that can only work to our advantage. But I think I know why he's been so God damn hard to track. He's trying to undermine the X-Men so people will be reluctant to call us in when something goes down. After all, if we can't stop them, what good are we? This is as much about public terror as it is about killing mutants and he doesn't give a shit who's caught in the crossfire.

Scott accused Rachel again of telling Colcord when we're ready to move out so that he can get out before we arrive. She offered to take the drugs again and I know he wanted to say yes this time. But Chuck told him that was like someone asking him to glue his eyes shut, and he backed off. Next time I don't think we'll be so lucky.

I really want to tell Angela to leave with the girls. I don't want her anywhere near this place when everything goes tits up and it will, mark my words. But she's a stubborn lady and says her place is here at my side, protecting our entire family. It's part of what I love best about her, but it still pisses me off when she uses it against me. Baby's fine, she's still gaining weight. Maybe it's twins!

Bennington says he'll do what he can to get us more current intel on that army, but he's got the same problems we do. He said he already lost three operatives in some of these attacks, which have moved from tiny, forgettable villages to slightly larger towns, but still nothing numbering over a few thousand people. I think these first few attacks have been tests, see how they worked as a single unit, now as at least two units. He'll probably break them up again, into either three or four units and start the real assault. Which would work out brilliantly for him, since we only have three jets. Three teams, four units. We'd have to pick a target that we won't be able to save and that won't help our cause at all.

Ten fucking years of fighting for equal rights and this guy brings us back to the beginning of the circle in less than two weeks. I think I'll kill him twice when the time comes.

Week three:

Mystique should here by the end of the week with ol' Mags in tow. Can't say as I'm happy about this, but maybe he'll have some luck finding that many people with metal skeletons in one place. I ain't sure how far his power reaches, but I'm grasping at straws here. Of course, there's a ton of conditions on his "release", which was actually contrived by Bennington with the help of that guy Randolph that helped extract us from Area 51. The one I like the best is that if he ever launches another attack against the people in this country, Bennington's got a special bullet with his name on it. I'm pretty sure the bullet is figurative, since any metal bullets won't make it close enough to him to actually do any damage. Or maybe it's made outta the same stuff as some of the missiles on Blackbird Three. Doesn't matter to me.

Mystique's also been warned to keep her ass in line or she'll be just as dead. I really hope he'll let me in on that action. I owe her and the bitch knows it. Yeah, she was a big help in getting us out and I think Angela even freaked her out a little. But evil goes to the bone and in her case, even deeper. Rogue even offered to help me out there, but I'm not sure how I feel about having the blue cunt running around in her head. Not to mention, she doesn't really need any more powers now, does she? Getting what she got from Danvers on top of her own ability was bad enough. Had I known then that she'd end up keeping them, I don't think I'd have let her hold on as long as she did. Then again, being nearly invulnerable and being able to fly comes in handy, so I guess I can't bitch too much.

Angela gained three more pounds. The scratches healed, but she keeps reminding me that I did this to her. She didn't seem to mind at the time.

Buzz finally got another message from his pal A-Dawg. I'm so glad that our code names aren't nearly as fucking stupid as the names hackers give themselves. Anyway, the guy said he'd been arrested for being on private property, but the last time he'd been up there it was all public land. They confiscated all of his photography equipment though, not knowing that the pics had already been sent on and the memory cards erased. He's pissed, it set him back several thousand dollars and he had a line on someone to buy some of the pictures he'd taken legitimately before he found the army. Who knew anyone in Canada had the balls to go that far? Hell, I'm Canadian and I can't think of anyone I've ever known up there that was that hardcore. Shit's certainly changed in a hundred years.

I might have to break down and ask Evie to see for us after all. Ten years old she's the best chance we've got. She's so strong already it's almost scary, but that doesn't mean I want her to see any of the shit those people are probably doing. But our choices are getting more and more limited and we're down to time here.

Sage said she found a pattern in the attacks, one that makes a really sick kind of sense. She said that some people have managed to escape, mostly mutants with powers that helped them get ahead of the wave – teleporters, fliers, a few telepaths and a precog. She said that all the attacks have happened in a spiral pattern with Chicago at the center. She thinks Colcord's pushing the escapees to eventually have no choice but to hole up in the city, get lost in the crowd so to speak. With the firepower he's got in Sentinels alone, he could level the whole city. And that ain't gonna happen, not on my watch.

Week four:

Three more attacks and the army definitely split into fourths. But there was at least one mutant they hadn't counted on, some guy who could control massive amounts of water in Minnesota. I can see where a guy who could do that would want to live there, since you can't swing a dead cat in that state without it flying into a lake when you let go. We don't know how he knew the army was coming, but he stayed put with a few other people who volunteered from his little town and when the first Sentinel came into view, he flooded the whole area. Seems those things ain't very waterproof and the metal filled soldiers sink really well. I should know, since I have the same problem. Drowning ain't necessarily a guaranteed way to kill me, but you can come pretty close. Colcord lost eight big Sentinels, about a dozen little ones and twenty-two soldiers. But they killed the guy before we could get there anyway and they were long gone when we showed up. Bastard didn't even bother to take his own dead, which should tell everyone what an asshole he really is. But the country is under the impression that this is some kind of fanatical mutant group that's just now coming out to fuck shit up, while the mutants are the only ones with the truth. If he'd just step back and think about the collateral damage, he might be more careful. And I'm about to become the Pope.

Angela gained another four pounds and hasn't spoken to me much in two days.

But she did talk to me enough to agree that we have to bring Evie in, because we can't afford to wait and try to rescue survivors anymore. That McKenzie woman said she tried, but she sees too many variables to be of much use. She said Evie has better "aim", that she can focus on the one vision that's the most likely with amazing accuracy, which is part of what makes her so powerful. None of us like it, but we've run out of options.

Speaking of which, Magneto and Mystique showed up this morning. He was holed up with Scott and Chuck in the office for two hours, probably going over the rules of the house. Number one, don't recruit our kids. The rest I could give a shit about. But get if we're gonna get through this, we'll need everyone we can get and if that includes Magneto, I suppose I can leave him be. For now.

Scott's still riding us about Rachel, thinking she's some kind of leak. The poor kid got so tired of hearing it, she went to Dr. Lee and had him give her the suppression drugs anyway. One-Eye didn't believe that they actually worked until Chuck told him he couldn't hear her anymore and what the Prof. says is law around here. So he's finally shut the fuck up about it, which is a minor miracle.

Week five:

We graduated a bunch of kids today in the formal ceremony and whoever wanted to be X-Men received a uniform without question. We also made the decision to get suits for everyone on Gamma team, even though none of them are technically ready for them. But we didn't see much choice, since we're probably gonna have to toss them into the front lines no matter how young they are. Especially the ones with really useful powers, like Time Bomb. We sent the human kids home; no need to put them in any more danger than they already are just for going here.

We tried to send the rest of the kids home too, but they wouldn't have it. Only a few of them are actual runaways anymore with nowhere else to go, so it kinda shocked me. But they explained that even if they can't go fight, they can stay here and defend the school or help evacuate the mansion and the surrounding area if the army does come here. Rachel shocked the shit out of Scott when she offered to be the last one out when the time comes. He asked her why – I think he forgot to hate her for a minute – and she just told him it was because the Sentinels can't compensate for her telekinesis and she's more than powerful enough to mass mindblast any people he brings. He pointed out that it was dangerous and she might not make it and she just shrugged and said "at least then you'd know I wasn't lying, wouldn't you?" He had the decency to be ashamed of himself after that.

I think his problem with her is that she's just like Jean, but she's not Jean, not to mention she's only thirteen. But even I've been fooled by my ears a time or two, when I hear her laughing in another room or the way she says certain things. But I know she's just a kid and damned if I don't feel like she's one of my own. Though why in hell I had to wind up with a pack that's all women is beyond me. I really hope Angela's having a boy. Or two. Shit, three wouldn't hurt.

Oh yeah, she only gained a pound this week, so she's speaking to me again. I'm glad, because I was getting tired of the silent treatment and washing my own back.

We still run Danger Room every other day with all the teams, in different combinations, and we're getting better. Our casualty rate is getting smaller every day and…

"Logan?" Angela said and I looked up from the laptop. I'd been trying to keep a weekly record of what was happening, because I just didn't know what else to do. She knew I was doing it, but never asked to read it. I think it's kind of the same reason I never ask her what her and Chuck talk about when she goes to him. But she always feels better when they're done. This hasn't helped me feel better at all; I just hate feeling like I'm doing nothing.

"Whatcha need tiger?" I replied, closing the computer.

"Evie says she's ready whenever you are."

"Ok, I'll be right there." She smiled and walked out of our room. Evie said she would need something to touch that had been around Colcord or part of the army in order to get a better fix on where they were. Angela had more hands on training experience with them, but I was afraid there might be some overflow that could stress her out. She'd been lucky so far with this pregnancy, in that she wasn't having any precog dreams, which Hank said must mean he won't be a precog. But he also agreed that she didn't need any chance of extra stress and so I was going to try to be Evie's focal point.

My girl wanted to do this out by the river where it's quiet and she has the water to meditate to, so I met her on the patio and we walked out there, hand in hand. We didn't talk like we normally would, because she wanted to start getting her focus on the trip out there. About ten minutes later, we came out on the bank. "Well princess, where ya wanna do this?"

She pointed to a sandy area that Angela and I had spent more than a few nights on. "Right there, I think." I nodded and we walked over there, where she pointed to the ground. "Now, you sit right there an' get comfy." I did so and she sat across from me. "Ok, you have to do your meditatin' thing, an' so do I. But whatever happens, whatever I do, don't let go of me, ok?"

"What's gonna happen?" I asked, just 'cause I was curious.

"I dunno. I've never done this with anyone that wasn't a precog. An' I might not get anythin' anyway. Or I might let go of _you_, but that doesn't mean anythin'."

"How will I know when you're done?"

"I'll tell you. Sheesh Daddy, you ask a lot o' questions." I laughed and she smiled back at me. "Now shut up an' let me do this."

She took both of my hands in hers and closed her eyes. I followed suit a second later, focusing my mind inward, clearing it. Nothing happened for a long time, but then I felt something odd in my mind. It wasn't like telepathy, which has a feeling even for those of us not blessed with that gift. No, this was something else, like my mind was a book and someone was rifling through looking for a certain page. But I didn't fight it, I didn't let go; I figured it must have something to do with Evie and just let it happen.

In the space of a heartbeat, I was no longer sitting on the bank of the river with my daughter, but standing on a street corner in a little town somewhere. I looked around, ready to pop my claws when I felt a tug on my belt. I looked down and there was Evie. "Punkin', where are we? Are you in my mind?"

She rolled her eyes. "No Daddy, you're in _my_ mind. I thought maybe only a telepath or another precog could do this, but I guess I was wrong." She looked around and frowned. "We gotta find where this is."

"So this is a vision?"

"Yeah. Kinda neat, huh?"

"Kinda," I mumbled, looking around. Now that I knew this wasn't necessarily real, I noticed things that were out of place. I could only see about two hundred feet in any direction, everything beyond that was obscured by a thick gray fog. There were no sounds and no scents beyond my own and my daughter's, also impossible for a public street corner in any sized town. And when I looked at her, she appeared to be translucent. I looked down at my own hand and saw that I had the same problem. I could now tell everyone I know how it feels to be a ghost.

"Hey princess, if this is a vision, how come nothin's movin'?" I asked, following behind her.

"Oh, 'cause I don't want it to," she replied simply, looking up at me. "It gets too confusin' if everythin's always movin', so I just get to where I can see exactly what I wanna see an' I stop it." My eyebrows took up residence somewhere in my hairline and she laughed. "Daddy! Cut it out, you look silly!"

"I just didn't know ya could do that."

"Erin showed me how, but she says I'm better'n she is." She continued walking, looking for something, but I had no idea what. "She says it's 'cause I'm gonna be more powerful, when my powers finish developin'. She says I'll be able to see farther away too."

"Can you control that part?"

She shook her head. "No, that just happens the way it wants to, 'specially when I'm dreamin'. But I can kinda do it a little, if what I'm lookin' for isn't too far away an' I'm touchin' somethin' that's from where I wanna see." She smiled at me and took my hand. "Just so's you know, I'm sittin' in your lap back at the river right now."

I'd had no idea she'd even moved, much less crawled into my lap. "How come?"

"Cuz I wasn't gettin' anythin' 'bout the bad men, 'cept where you an' Mommy were all last year. So I looked 'round an' you're still wearin' the tags they gave you." She was right, much as I hate to admit it. But old habits die hard and I know Angela still wore hers too. "So I'm holdin' onto those, 'cause I'm guessin' the other ones will have tags too. I'm tryin' to see where the tags are gonna be soon."

"Can you see where they are now?"

"Yeah, but they're movin' in jets like the X-Men have an' there wasn't anythin' there to show me where they were goin'. So I'm doin' this instead." She kept walking and looking all around. She finally shouted "aha!" and ran ahead of me. I followed and she was standing in front of a newspaper machine. "See?" She pointed to the machine. "This is where they'll be, day after tomorrow."

The paper was called the "Burlington Corners Daily" and the slogan said "The best little paper in Illinois". I smiled and swept her into my arms. "Good job Evie! Now take us back." She nodded and closed her eyes and just like that, we were back by the river. Sure enough, she was cuddled up in my lap, my tags clenched in her little fist. She opened her eyes and smiled at me. "Princess, you are my hero," I said, completely serious.

She giggled and kissed me on the cheek. "You're so silly, Daddy! I'm just a little kid, you're the hero here."

"Did you happen to see where the rest of 'em are goin'?"

"No, but I can try if you want me to."

"Are you up for it? Do ya need a break or anythin'?" She shook her head. "You sure?"

"Daddy, I've been practicin' for this all year. If I need a break I'll tell you."

"Ok then, let's go." We closed our eyes again and fell into the depths of her mind.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

By dinnertime, we'd found where each part of the army would be within the next few days. Unfortunately, we didn't have the manpower to send a team to meet each unit and we only had one Magneto. But he'd been working with Polaris, Seth and Simon and had helped them to improve their already impressive skill with using their powers. Seth and Simon especially intrigued him, but the two of them were fully aware of who he is and wouldn't listen to anything he had to say that wasn't directly related to improving their mutations. We hoped he'd taught them all enough to be helpful, because they were going out with the teams.

Rather than using the normal designations, Chuck called the Omega squad. So we were all going out as Omegas One, Two and Three. Omega one consisted of myself, Cyclops, Atlas, Rogue and Echo with Magneto. Omega Two had Angela (under protest by both me and Hank, but she overruled us by pointing out that we didn't have the manpower to leave her behind), Mystique, Colossus, Gambit and Cannonball with Seth and Simon. Omega Three was Totem, Shadowcat, Jubilee, Nightcrawler and Angel with Polaris. What surprised me the most was Erin McKenzie insisting on going with Omega One.

"Why?" I asked, not wanting to bring someone along who didn't have a really useful combat power. "You ain't trained, you've never been in combat an' we ain't got the time to babysit you!"

"Mr. Logan, I'm sure you know that mutants with similar powers are never the same. You and your wife have essentially the same mutation, yet she comes back from the dead and you're just too much of an asshole to stay that way."

"Up yours, princess!" I growled, even as Scooter laughed in the corner.

"I'm not finished!" She shouted right back, stunning us both into silence. "Evie and I have the same mutation, but hers works best at a distance, so to speak. But mine's just the opposite. I get the clearest visions of things that are going to happen within a matter of minutes."

I stared at her. "So you're sayin' that you can tell me what I'm gonna do five minutes from now?"

"If I wanted to, yes. Would you like me to try, write it down and give it to someone to hold on to until then?" I scowled at her and she just stared me down. "Well?"

"No, damn it. But I don't like it."

"Hey, I might not be the biggest badass on the planet, but I can shoot a gun. Got any of those?"

"Now hold on," Scott protested and she fixed her eyes on him. "We can't have anyone with the X-Men start shooting people!"

"I'm not gonna shoot just anyone, genius, just the bad guys."

"She's got ya there, Cyke," I said, not bothering to hide my smirk. At least she was an equal opportunity bitch. "And the answer is yes, we do."

One-Eye turned to me, his mouth clenched so tight his lips all but vanished. "Excuse me?"

"Angela took one with her when she went to find me back before Evie was born. We still have it."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Ya didn't need ta know!"

"I won't have weapons just lying around the mansion like that!"

"Jesus H. Christ, Scott!" Angela shouted, jumping off the couch. "It's not just 'lying around'! It's locked up in my room and I have the only key. What the hell do you take me for?"

"I thought you were a responsible adult who knew better than to bring something like that into a school!"

"Says the guy with laser cannons for eyes," she shot back, crossing her arms.

"Now that's hardly fair!"

"ENOUGH!" We all jumped and looked at the Professor, who had just roared at all of us both vocally and telepathically. He lowered his handkerchief from his face and I caught a faint whiff of his blood. Something he's not telling us? Before I could say anything, he leveled a steely gaze on everyone in the room. "I cannot _believe _you are squabbling like children at a time like this! We finally have the information we so desperately needed and all you can do is argue over petty details!" Scott opened his mouth to say something, but Xavier silenced him with an icy glare. "I am not sending you out to face an angry mob of anti-mutant protesters. You are about to face an army that is an almost unstoppable force that will kill you and everything else in its path. A gun will almost certainly not stop any of them for long, but it might give her a few seconds more to help you."

"Professor, we've always used our gifts to defend ourselves! If we start arming up now…"

"Jesus Cyke, don't you pay attention?" I snapped. "Echo an' Totem both have swords. Shadowcat has a pair of sais. Gambit has a staff. Medusa's ex-military an' can probably use any firearm I can give her. An' did ya forget about these?" I popped my claws about an inch from his nose and he . "I'd stick a weapon in everyone's hands if I had my way! This ain't a rescue mission, this is a frontal assault on an enemy force. Maybe you think this is a good day to die, but I sure as hell don't." I retracted my claws, then crossed my arms. "So you either get used to it or get off this team, I ain't got time to pussyfoot around with these people."

He clenched his jaw and looked away, not willing to admit he might not have what it takes to make it through this. I didn't know what was going through his mind, but when he looked back up, he was practically shaking. "I know what's at stake here, Logan, even if you think I don't. I've seen the aftermath of their handiwork and I want them stopped as much as anyone else in this room. I won't be holding back on the augmented soldiers, but I will not kill any of the non-mutant support personnel no matter what you say."

"Haven't you been listening?" McKenzie asked. "Every person with that army is out to kill us! Are you honestly saying you'd rather take a bullet to the head than kill the guy with the gun? 'Cause that isn't gonna prove anything to anyone, except that you're too stupid to live!"

"You don't even know me!" He shouted back, getting right in her face. "You don't know anything about me!"

"I know enough. And believe me, I've seen more of you than you can imagine." She lowered her voice and leaned in. "I'm a precog, remember? The best visions come to me close up, but even _my_ dreams come true." She backed away from him and turned to my wife. "Now about that gun?"

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

So McKenzie came with Omega One. In the end, it turned out to be a good thing, even with the price that was paid. She said she didn't need a fancy nickname, but we insisted she have something besides her own name for us to call her over the coms. So she told us to just call her Mack and be done with it.

Blackbird One still didn't have any conventional weapons, so Omega One opted to take it. With Magneto on board, we hoped we wouldn't need anything else. We were also taking position several hours before the army would arrive at our target, which was Burlington Corners. According to the information that Sage dug up for us, the town was almost a statistical anomaly in that almost half of its population were mutants. A little more digging on her part and we discovered that they'd long ago accepted their mutant population after a tornado had gone through and almost leveled the town in the early seventies, and it had been the concentrated efforts of a mutant family that had saved over half the survivors in the first place. Naturally, they didn't advertise this to the general public, but they'd always been a quiet haven for mutants who found their way there. Chuck had sent an urgent message to the mayor several hours before we even left, advising him to get as many of his people out as he could. Most of the normal humans packed up and hightailed it out of there, but many of the mutants were staying behind. We were informed that they would keep out of sight as much as possible and that they would follow our orders, so we decided to let it stand. It would help keep the illusion that the town was actually populated.

Once we'd set down and everyone was off the jet, Scott set it on autopilot to hide itself in a small forested area about five klicks to the north of us. Mack was staying in the back ranks with Magneto, both for her own safety and to back him up if he needed it. The rest of us spread out to the positions we'd scoped out from the air and on our three-dimensional display map in the jet. Scooter was pissed off that he wasn't leading this group; I was. But Chuck pointed out that I had more experience with these people and would make a better leader against them because of it. Again, what Xavier says is law, especially in an Omega situation, and Scott quit his bitching.

As soon as everyone was in position, I checked in with them. "Omega leader to Omega team, report." Everyone checked in, including Magneto though he sounded less than pleased to be working under me. I smiled to myself, finding it really hard to give a shit how he felt. I owed him too and someday, I would get him. "All right everyone, hold position til those assholes show up. Don't hold back when ya see 'em, just take 'em out."

"What about the people that didn't leave?" One-Eye asked, obviously forgetting that they'd stayed by choice.

"What about 'em? They stayed 'cause this is their home. If they wanna mix it up a bit, more power to 'em."

"Those Sentinels will hunt them down with no problem!"

"I believe the Sentinels are my concern," Magneto said smoothly. "I am certain I can hold them all for as long as it takes."

"Affirmative, Magneto. Happy Cyke?"

"No. Civilians have no business being a part of this."

"Tell it to the complaint department. Wolverine out." I sat back on the roof of the bank building, one of the tallest in this little town and took stock of my surroundings. It was very early in the morning, sunrise only a few minutes past and the whole town was quiet. All of the attacks had happened about this time and Evie was pretty sure this wouldn't be an exception. So it didn't surprise me too much when just a few moments later, I felt a tremor in the earth. Not like an earthquake, but like something very large had just impacted with the earth and not that far away.

I tapped my earpiece. "Wolverine to Omegas, dahell was that?"

"Giant Sentinel approaching from the south," Echo said from where she was holding position in a large tree. "Wait, make that two giants. Taking to the air."

"Affirmative," I said into the com, but she'd already gone silent. We didn't know how many giant Sentinels they'd bring with them, but we were hoping not many. Magneto was the only weapon we had that we were pretty sure would be of any use, because their shells were made of metal. Maybe Colcord had figured that Magneto would never get out again and wanted to make them impervious to other mutant powers, but that wouldn't be any help now. We _had_ Magneto, much as I hated it, and the other teams had their own people to help them.

But we also didn't know if they'd all come from one direction or surround the town, so I had people in position at every major entrance - all four of them - with me and Atlas as near to the center as possible. Echo and Rogue both had packs with those little charges in them that we'd used on the Outback mission and as soon as we had a confirmed sighting, they'd been instructed to begin the strike and run we'd employed in Australia, herding the lot of them to the center of town. Once there, the others would converge on them and the fun could begin.

I heard a muffled "whump" followed by shouts and the chilling sound of gunshots. "Echo, come in!" I growled into my earpiece.

"Echo here, going in for another pass!" She shouted and I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Rogue to leader, two more giants sighted comin' in from the north!" Marie said and her voice held a hint of something that could only be described as delight. "Goin' for my first pass!"

"Copy that Rogue!" I replied and peered into the distance to her position. I couldn't actually see her, but I did catch the explosions from the charges she dropped. More gunshots rang out, but I didn't worry about her too much. She was almost completely invulnerable and I doubted they had any bullets of high enough caliber to take her down.

"Mack to leader, three giants coming from the east!" Erin said.

"Roger, Mack," I said. "Watch Mags' back, he's gonna be busy."

"Not so busy, my dear boy," Lensherr added with a chuckle. "Let's see how well these things travel with all of their moving parts missing."

"Cyclops to leader, three more giants from the west!" I scanned in that general direction and heard the first of the Sentinels speak over Scott's still active com. "Mutant DNA detected. Mutant two-one-seven, code name Cyclops." What the fuck! How the hell did it know that? "Compensating for mutant power, optic blasts."

Compensating? That couldn't be good. "Omega leader to Rogue! Back up Cyclops now!"

"Roger leader!" She said and a moment later I saw her flash overhead towards Scott's position. The electronic monotone came through the com a moment later. "Mutant DNA detected. Mutant two-five-nine, code name Rogue." Shit! Where were they getting their info? "Mutant abilities life draining and flight. Other powers unknown. Employing countermea…" An explosion suddenly cut off the voice and I knew she'd gotten another charge successfully placed.

"Echo to leader, coming your way fast!" She sounded a bit winded and I stood up just in time to watch as she dove from the sky at an amazing speed. She snapped her wings open at the last moment and landed a little hard next to me. "Wolverine, I'm hit." She said just before her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell into my arms, so I lowered her gently to the roof to assess the damage. Her wings had taken at least eight gunshots and she was bleeding from her right shoulder and right lower leg.

I cursed softly and tapped my earpiece. "Omega leader to Rogue!"

"Copy!"

"You busy?"

Another explosion filled the air. "Not anymore."

"Need ya to get Echo back to mobile base an' get back here as fast as ya can!"

"Roger that, sugah. Be right there."

"Cyclops to leader, giants destroyed. Count ten minis and about a hundred foot heading your way!"

"Affirmative Cyclops. What's your twenty?"

"Running like hell towards you right now!"

"Mack to leader, come in!"

"Go ahead!"

"No Sentinels left here, but about a hundred foot on their way to you!"

"Roger that, where are ya?"

"Right here," I heard Lensherr say as he set down lightly behind me, Mack held in his arms. "Shall I finish off the rest of the Sentinels to the west?"

"You finish off every fuckin' robot ya see Lensherr, then get your ass back here."

"As you wish." He gestured imperiously and I briefly felt the magnetic cushion he used to keep himself airborn.

"He's a real drama queen, ain't he?" Mack asked.

"You have no idea," I replied, shaking my head. "You all right?"

"So far, so good. Is your job always like this?"

"Pretty much." I heard the sound of someone running and looked down to see Cyke running like the devil himself was on his tail. He glanced up to my position before peeling off to his secondary post in a narrow alley between a drugstore and a diner. "Omega leader to Cyclops, report."

"Foot should be here shortly," he replied, sounding winded. "Orders?"

"Hold for my signal."

"Roger that."

"Rogue to leader, Echo is secure. Repeat, Echo is secure."

"Affirmative Rogue. Fall back to secondary position."

"Copy that." Another electronic voice filled the air a moment later. "Mutant DNA detected. Mutant one-seven-two, code name Magneto. Unable to compensate for mutant power, control of magnetic fields. Initiating termination protocols." As soon as I found out how these things knew so much about us, heads would roll. "Rogue to leader, should I assist?"

"Affirmative!" I shouted and she shot overhead. I could hear the sounds of many feet rushing my way and I turned to Mack. "Get your ass on the ground an' under cover, now!" She didn't need to be told twice, she just ran to the ladder that led to the fire escape and was gone a moment later. "Omega leader to Atlas, ya ready?"

"Roger that, Wolverine," he replied.

"Hold til they're in front o' the bank."

"Affirmative." I tensed, waiting for the army to finally come into view. About fifteen seconds later, the first of them rushed down the street. A few seconds after that, more of them poured in from the south and west, and I took off at a run for the edge of the roof. Right on cue, an SUV came flying from the north and Cyclops hit it with a beam just before it hit the ground. The vehicle exploded just as I leapt off the edge of the building and scattered burning fuel and shrapnel over the army. I landed on the sidewalk and popped my claws, looking for someone to fight but no one was moving in my immediate area.

About fifty of them had been directly in the path and they appeared to be little more than smoking corpses on the ground, though I could see their skin knitting rapidly back together. But they should have suffered enough internal damage to keep them out of the fight. "Wolverine to Rogue, secondary protocol now!"

"Affirmative, on my way!" Her job now was a lot trickier. With Echo being out of commission she held the only gun loaded with carborandium darts. We'd made sure that each of them carried enough darts to take out at least three hundred each, which would have been more than enough to neutralize the healing factor on every one of them with a few to spare for misses. But with Echo out of the fight, Rogue didn't have enough to get them all.

"Wolverine to Magneto!" I barked into the com, smoke from the still-burning SUV making my eyes water.

"Something I can help you with?" He replied and I resisted the urge to growl. He just couldn't follow simple instructions, could he?

"If you're done dickin' with the Sentinels, we need you at the secondary point now!"

"On my way."

I rushed to the alley where Cyclops was still hiding out and saw that he'd been joined by Atlas. "What happened to the rest of 'em?" I asked, trying to scent the air.

"They scattered down towards the south as soon as it hit," Cyclops said, choking in the smoky air. "Probably regrouping."

I nodded in agreement, then looked around. "Where's Mack?" I reached up to tap my com, but she peeked from behind a dumpster and I sighed. "Don't do that to me."

"What?" She snapped, coming out of hiding. "I wasn't about to get anywhere near the road with cars flying all over the damn place!"

I shook my head and turned back to the mouth of the alley. A few seconds later, Rogue and Magneto flew in and set down lightly next to us. "What now boss?" Rogue asked with a smirk.

"What's with the Sentinels?"

"Those that were not blown up by the ladies have been well taken care of," Lensherr said coolly. "I assure you, Wolverine, they will not be a factor in this."

"Good." I peered around the corner and caught the barest hint of movement out on the street – advance scouts. "Rogue, Magneto, back in the air. Cyclops, you and Mack stay here. Atlas, with me."

"Roger leader," they all replied and took to their positions. Atlas glanced at me, a smile on his face. "What are we going to do?"

I grinned back. "Kick all their asses, what else?"

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

We'd trained them too well. At least, that's what I told myself when all was said and done. And as much as I can't stand the guy and hope that I get to kill him someday, none of us would have probably made it out of there without Magneto. We still lost one that day and it pissed me off because it was so fucking stupid.

As soon as everyone was in position, Atlas and I eased out of the alley. The smoke had died down and only small bits of smoldering wreckage were left here and there on the ground. The fifty or so that had been taken out by the SUV were still lying on the ground, not moving. Hell, if I'd been hit by an exploding SUV, it would take me some time to recover, so I didn't expect them to be part of this fight no matter what. As I scanned the area beyond that, the wind shifted and mixed in with the smell of burnt metal and flesh, blood and overheated asphalt, I caught the scents of about a dozen people I didn't recognize. A moment later, a voice rang out. "How'd you do it, X-Men?" She shouted. "How'd you know where we would be?"

I knew that voice – Sylph. "Atlas, I don't want her to know I'm here," I said.

He nodded and stepped forward as I melted into the shadows. "We got ourselves a precog, genius. She told us."

"Precog?" She made a scoffing noise and stepped forward out of another alley. "Wolverine and Hellcat's kid is dead, asshole."

I suppressed a growl, but let Sam keep up the pretense. "She wasn't the only precog in the world. We found another one."

"Oh yeah? She tell you about this?" She let loose with a focused but continuous burst of air that would have knocked a lesser man right off his feet. But Sam's strength is nothing short of amazing and even though it knocked him back a few steps, he leaned into it and started stalking towards her. "Give it up, old man. You can't win this. You're outnumbered and outgunned."

"You think?" He shouted.

I tapped my com. "Rogue, start dartin' 'em," I whispered. "But get that one first."

"Roger leader," she replied. I chanced a glance around the corner of the building and saw that Sylph was walking straight down the middle of the street. Stupid. It was like she forgot everything we ever taught her. I slid my claws out slowly and climbed up the side of the building.

"So where is he?" Sylph asked, redoubling her efforts. "Is Wolverine here? Or do you have Hellcat with you?"

"What's it to you?" Sam replied, still fighting against her winds.

"'Cause I want the pleasure of showing the teacher that I have become the master."

"Magneto, can you see me?" I asked into the com.

"Yes," he replied, sounding bored.

"On my mark, I want you to drop me right behind her, slow an' easy."

"You wouldn't prefer something a little more dramatic?"

I gritted my teeth. "It's called a sneak attack, asshole. Just do it."

"Very well, on your mark."

"Where's Colcord?" Sam shouted to Sylph, who had changed tactics and was now trying to batter him with bits of debris, which he batted away with no problem.

"What, your pet precog couldn't see that?" She asked, laughing. "Not very good, is she?"

I nodded in approval – Atlas was buying the time I needed to get her where I wanted her. "She got us this far and she'll see that we stop all of you!" A large chunk of twisted metal flew towards him and he dodged it easily. "But I think you're already out of time."

"The hell you talking about? I haven't even _started_ with you!" She grunted and reached up to her neck, her winds dying. "What's this? A drug dart?" She laughed and pulled it out tossing it aside. "They exposed us to everything, I'm immune!"

"Magneto, now!" I said and felt myself lifted into the air. A heartbeat later, I came down light as a feather right behind her with my claws already out. "Sorry to disappoint ya, darlin', but he's right." I growled.

She whirled around, her hands up to blast me but I buried my claws in her gut and shoved upwards. "That ain't gonna cut it, Wolverine."

"I think it already has." I ripped my hand to the side, spilling her guts all over the ground and she toppled over with a look of horror on her face when she realized she wasn't healing. "Didja really think they'd make ya the way ya are without knowin' how to kill ya too?"

And all hell broke loose. Soldiers came pouring down the street, Shatter in the lead. "Magneto, get that guy!" I shouted into the com and he was suddenly lifted off the ground, shrieking. A few seconds later he came back down, crumpled into a ball. I didn't have time to react to that as a knot of about a dozen people swarmed me and I lashed out blindly, stabbing and slashing anything that moved. I absently noted that Atlas was also surrounded, but a red beam shot out of the alley, picking off soldiers here and there. People were being lifted off their feet and tossed back down in bloody heaps courtesy of Magneto, while several others were writhing on the ground bleeding from stab wounds that weren't healing. I fought my way over to Atlas just in time to watch as he grabbed a guy and heaved him hard enough that he went straight through the brick façade of the bank building.

"That won't keep him down long!" He shouted as he punched a guy in the chest, caving it in and the man went down hard. So they had some of the non-metal guys with them. Excellent!

"Just take 'em out however ya can!" I replied as I gutted another soldier. Another filled the gap in his place and I slashed down hard, grunting as my claws met adamantium. I kicked the woman away and turned to face another opponent, opening him up from shoulder to hip. A sudden burst of burning pain went through me and I looked down to see a knife buried to the hilt in my side. I elbowed the guy in his face, shattering his nose and he stumbled into Atlas. He grabbed the guy by the arm and pulled, removing the limb at the shoulder and the guy stopped and stared in astonishment.

What most people just don't seem to understand is that the adamantium keeps our bones from breaking. But although it coats every inch of bone surface, the actual joints still function normally, otherwise we wouldn't be able to move at all. So shoulder and hip sockets, the knees, the elbows and especially the discs between the vertebrae are all just as vulnerable as a normal human's. I can sever a spinal cord with a single claw as long as my aim is absolutely perfect and people like Atlas, Colossus and Rogue are more than strong enough to pull us limb from limb with their bare hands, or even wrench someone's head right off their shoulders.

Which is precisely what was happening. Atlas knew about this vulnerability, as did Rogue, because I taught them that. Once they'd all managed to beat the real Wolverine and Hellcat in the Danger Room, we'd told them about this little problem and set them up against the virtual us. It was a bit disturbing to see them tearing my arms off, but as a means of getting me disabled quickly it was extremely effective. And it worked just as well here against enemies that really were hell bent on killing them. I caught a flash of movement in the corner of my eye and barely managed to dodge a body falling out of the sky, one green feathered wing missing. The missing wing followed a few seconds later and I glanced up to see Rogue and Magneto facing about eight other flyers, only two of which had wings of some variety. But those that we were wounding weren't healing, so Rogue had successfully darted as many as she could. Good girl.

A scream from the alley broke through the other noise and I whipped my head around. "Go check it out!" Atlas shouted as he ripped an arm off another guy and turned to beat someone else with it.

I took off at a dead run just in time to hear several gunshots followed by Cyclops shouting and firing a beam that lit up the whole alley. I rounded the corner, only to see him lowering Mack to the ground, her belly slashed open. At the other end of the alley lay a crumpled body, another of the non-metal guys. "What happened?" I asked.

"He came out of nowhere, I swear!" Scott replied, trying desperately to help Mack.

"Yeah, but I got him," she replied, ending with a cough. "But he got me too."

Scott clung to her, knowing there was nothing he could do for her. "Why'd you do it?" He asked, sounding pained.

"Saw it. Saw it a…long time ago…in a dream." She smiled weakly and patted his hand. "Knew this would…happen."

"You should have stayed out of this!"

She shook her head and coughed up a huge gout of blood. "No. Had to do it, had to…save you. You…would've done…the same for…m…" Her voice trailed off and she was still, her eyes staring.

"Mack!" He shouted and pulled her close, but I didn't have time for this.

"Cyclops! Let her go!" I shouted, grabbing him by the shoulders and giving him a hard shake. "She did this on her own, ya hear me! I need ya to focus, damn it!"

"Logan, she saved me. She turned and shot him right before he dropped down, but he had a knife..."

"Listen to me." He shook his head and I gave him another hard shake. "Listen! She did what she had to do! Now you get out there an' do your job, hear me?" I pointed at her and he looked down. "Don't make this pointless!"

He clenched his jaw and although I couldn't see his eyes, I know what I would have seen if I could – pure rage. He lowered her gently to the ground and stalked out of the alley. I looked down at Mack, who had insisted on coming with us and I didn't know why. Now I did. I knelt down briefly and closed her eyes. "We'll get 'em, all of 'em," I whispered and ran back out into the fight.

After that, it was all over except for the screaming.

* * *

**AN:** Sorry for the somewhat late-ish update, but work's been hell, it's almost Homecoming so there's been teenaged girl drama and (at the risk of oversharing) i have cramps...but, here it is, for you to enjoy...:) Special thanks to my beta reader, Turiel Tincdaniel...Super Special thanks to all of my readers...and Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were Andromeda Jones, TnTornado, LifeBringsMeOnlyTears and theNightEnchantress...Miss Jones: So glad grandma didn't freak on you:) Mr. Tornado: Yeah, i know...:) I had a version of a later chapter that had Charles being proven wrong and wackiness (a.k.a. "mayhem") ensued due to Logan and Angela, but it kept petering out and going nowhere...so you won't be seeing anything like that...in THIS story, at least...::wink:: LBMOT: Really? You think i write a good Scott? Cuz i gotta say, he's always been my least favorite character out of all of them...but i hope this battle scene here was worth the wait!

**Now if you've never reviewed before and would like to see a new chapter right away (or at least as soon as i check my email!), why not click that little button marked "go" down there and say hello:)**


	21. Interlude and Chapter 21

**Special Note:** Everyone, say hello to **Morgomir**, who has been on a marathon read of all my stories...:) This chapter's dedicated to you...:)

* * *

Interlude: Cyclops

Mack was the only casualty of our first frontal assault on Colcord's army, but it was one too many. I don't care what she said, there had to have been some way to save her. What's the point of seeing the future if we can't change it? Sarah tried to understand why I took it so hard, but as much as I love her and she loves me, she really didn't understand this one. No, I didn't really like Mack very much. She struck me as stubborn, impulsive and a bit reckless. In fact, she reminded me of Logan and, to some extent, Angela. But Mack didn't have a healing factor to save her, yet she threw herself in front of that guy and let him kill her to save me. She said she knew it was going to happen and that it had to happen that way, that I had to be saved. I didn't understand that, _don't_ understand that, but she's not here for me to ask.

The other teams fared better, in that no one died. Polaris came back with a nasty bump on her head, Kurt sprained his wrist and his tail got broken, and Mystique and Gambit both came back with ugly stab wounds that required us to call Dr. Endicott to assist with sewing them back up. The rest of the Omega squads had various minor bumps and bruises, but we'd accomplished our goal and stopped the army. This time.

Evie continues to feed us information, though I still don't like the idea of her being as involved in this whole thing. She's so young and the things she must be seeing...I can't imagine how she deals with it. But Charles has put the word out to find us another adult precog to come and help her with her powers, though no one's answered the call as yet. Maybe they've all seen something and don't want to be here when it happens. Or maybe they don't want to put themselves in the same position that Mack found herself in, I don't know. Either way, we're on our own here, for the most part. It takes a certain kind of person to be a hero, something that goes even deeper than having special powers. Compassion is part of it, bravery another part, but most of all it takes a willingness to sacrifice oneself for something greater. Mack taught me that more than anything the Professor ever said. A woman who obviously didn't like me, that I wasn't fond of myself, gave her life for mine because she said she had to. I don't know what that means. I may never know what that means. But from now on, every battle I fight, every enemy I take down, I'm doing it for her.

I never thought I would understand why Logan and Angela feel such a need for vengeance. Now I do.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Chapter 21

(Logan)

**Baltimore:**

The X-Men defeated two dozen Sentinels and a hundred and ten Weapon X soldiers. Atlas, Wolfsbane, Siryn and Sunfire wounded, none severely.

**Seattle:**

X-Men took out ten Sentinels and ninety-three Weapon X soldiers. Jubilee and Beast wounded. Jubilee taken off active duty to recover, but she'll be fine in a couple weeks.

**Houston:**

Faced off against fourteen Sentinels and eighty-six Weapon X soldiers. Angel, Iceman, Seth and Magneto wounded. Learned the hard way that Elixir can reattach limbs. Good thing there won't be a scar, Angela would kill me.

**Detroit:**

Fought eight Sentinels and found location of Master Mold. Took out sixty-one Weapon X soldiers. Can't figure out how they're keeping them under control in the face of these odds. No injuries this time.

**Miami:**

Still way too fucking hot down here. X-Men defeated nine Sentinels, seventy-five Weapon X soldiers and destroyed Master Mold. It was hidden underwater eighty miles offshore. Had to have Storm come on that one, but since Angela's officially too pregnant for the field, she had a good babysitter. Echo, Time Bomb, Wild Child and Simon wounded. But since Elixir's back, it doesn't matter. Minor injuries still going to Hank, with Josh handling the most severe cases only.

**Washington DC:**

Multiple Man filled the White House with enough copies to fool the infrared scanners the army brought with them, but the President and all the real people that are supposed to be there were long gone by the time the Weapon X assholes showed up. Destroyed what we believe to be the last of the giant Sentinels, all four of them, and about six of the smaller ones. Not sure how many of those are left. Killed fifty-nine Weapon X soldiers. No injuries, technically, though we did learn that if one of Jamie's copies dies, it doesn't seem to affect him. Hank's fascinated, though admits he doesn't want to go out of his way to explore the development. By my count, Colcord's only got about half the soldiers he started with, counting the damage we did with our first strike. Didn't realize that many had retreated, or else he's rolling more out that haven't been completely augmented. Either way, I think we might just pull this off.

**San Diego:**

X-Men: Many, Weapon X: None. Took out fourteen Sentinels and eighty-four soldiers. Storm took a minor gunshot to her upper right arm and Atlas nearly had a coronary. I'm pretty sure he survived the fight that followed after he told her she "wasn't allowed" to go out anymore, but I haven't actually seen him since either. Might have to go check on him to be sure. Shadowcat, Hellion and Cyclops also injured. One-Eye will have to stay out of the next one. He's pissed.

**Toronto:**

Now I'm beyond pissed. It was bad enough hitting the states, but now he's after my stomping ground and that's a can of worms he should have never fucking opened. Destroyed a dozen Sentinels and seventy-seven soldiers, most of them all by myself. Rogue complained that I wasn't leaving her anything to do, but that's just the me in her head talking. I'm actually sorry that so many of the X-Men have had to learn how to kill, but I think they finally understand that some people can't be helped, others just don't want to be. And as fucking psycho as most of these soldiers have been, it's made me wonder how Colcord picks them. It can't be random, because he'd have grabbed a lot more than he's got. Did he always pick people that had no problem killing? If that's true, what's it say about me?

**Montreal:**

I'll kick them all out of Canada if it's the last thing I do. Took out eleven Sentinels and eighty soldiers. Mystique, Polaris, Simon, Nightcrawler and Jubilee were all injured, Mystique and Simon will have to sit the next one out. I guess I technically got hurt too - getting flash-fried by some dickhead that breathes fire will do that - but all the skin had grown back by the time we got home. Simon ratted me out anyway.

**Los Angeles:**

Bastard decided to try pulling out all the stops this time. We rose to the occasion, even without Metal Boy and the blue bitch. Fifty-five Sentinels, reduced to scrap between Magneto, Polaris and me. Three hundred fifty-two soldiers in much the same shape thanks to Atlas, Colossus, Magneto, Polaris, Totem and me. Still no sign of Colcord. Not like I've been hiding. No one can figure out what the hell he's waiting for, not even Evie. And that worries me most of all.

**New York City:**

Forty-one Sentinels, an even hundred soldiers. Don't like him this close to home. Have to ask Evie to try to see what he's up to again. Maybe that's the point - maybe he's not actively planning something and this was all on paper so long ago that we're being dumb looking forward. Maybe we should see if she can look _back_ and see what's going to happen next.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"Logan, come to bed," Angela said sleepily. "You can write it all down in the morning."

"There's somethin' we've been missin'," I replied, not looking up from the laptop, "an' I can't help but think I can figure it out if I look it all over at once."

"It'll still be there tomorrow. Come on, I'm cold."

I smirked and turned to her. "Darlin', it's July."

"And the air conditioning is a little too enthusiastic. I'm freezing my nipples off here."

"Well, we can't have that." I closed the laptop and crossed over to the bed, shedding clothes along the way. I climbed in beside her and she snuggled up to me, her growing belly pressed up against me. I put my hand over it, just barely able to feel the movements in there and smiled. "He's busy tonight."

"He's pissing me off," she grumbled. "Evie was on a much better schedule, sleeping when I wanted to sleep, eating when I was hungry. This little guy's definitely a lot more like you."

"God, I hope not. Poor thing won't have a chance with an ugly mug like this." She slapped me on the shoulder and I chuckled. "Still don't know what ya see in me."

"Just be glad I see it. Otherwise you'd still be wandering the world, boozing and whoring."

"Ah, the good ol' days." She growled and slapped me again and I laughed out loud, grabbing her gently and pulling her into a kiss. "I'm jokin' tiger. I wouldn't trade what I have here anythin' in the world."

"You mean that?" I nodded and she kissed me again. "I just love the hell out of you."

"Mm, I love you too, darlin'."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I came awake all at once with a prickling feeling in my scalp. Something wasn't right and I couldn't figure out what it was. I strained my ears but I couldn't hear anything, so I reached carefully over Angela and picked up the internal com to buzz the security office. "Hey, it's Logan."

"Hey Wolvie," Jubilee said. "What's up?"

"I dunno. Just got a bad feelin' all o' a sudden. Check the cameras for me, would ya?"

"Sure thing, but I just checked everything five minutes ago and there wasn't anyth…whoa."

I sat straight up and Angela grumbled in her sleep. "What?"

"I've got movement on the north perimeter, but it doesn't make sense."

"Whattaya mean?"

"I mean plants and stuff are moving, but there's no one there."

I growled low in my chest. "Call the alert, get the kids in the Danger Room an' suit up, now!"

"But Wolvie, it's probably just…"

"Just fuckin' do it!" I shouted and threw the com down. Angela was fully awake and already tossing the blankets aside. "Get your ass down in the Danger Room."

"No fucking way!" She snapped. "Not here, not in my home!"

"I ain't got time to argue with ya! Get the girls an' get in there or I'll knock ya out myself." I crossed to the closet where we both had spare suits hanging. All the X-Men had spares in their rooms, just in case.

"You wouldn't."

"Try me." I slammed the doors open and started pulling on the black leather suit, already working out a defense strategy in my head. Once dressed, I grabbed the boots and gloves and sat down on the edge of the bed to put the shoes on. "I ain't gonna risk you or that baby. If they get that far, I know you'll mix it up, but there ain't no reason for ya to go outta you're way, all right?"

"I'll get you for this," she grumbled, but pulled on a pair of sweats and one of her silly maternity tops.

"I'm sure ya will, but it ain't gonna be today." I pulled the gloves on and zipped up my sleeves, then grabbed her and kissed her hard. "Now get outta here, get the girls to safety."

"I love you," she whispered, pressing her forehead to mine for a moment before rushing to Evie's room. Less than five seconds later she came back out clutching our daughter's hand.

I picked her up and hugged her fiercely. "You keep an eye on your mom, ya hear me princess?"

She nodded and kissed me. "I love you Daddy. Be careful."

"I love you too." I put her down and she took Angela's hand again. "Now go!" They dashed out of the room into the hallway, where senior students were already leading knots of kids downstairs. A couple of those older kids would be joining us, but not until everyone who needed to be hidden away was safe. Angela opened the door to Laura and Rachel's room and gathered them up before stopping at Storm and Sam's room to collect Jade. The five of them rushed to the elevator and disappeared from sight.

I ran down the front stairs to the entrance hall where most of Alpha and Beta team were already waiting. "Logan, what's going on?" Kitty asked.

"They're comin'," I replied as the rest of Beta and half of Delta showed up.

"What?" Scott asked. "Are you sure?"

"Even if he isn't, I am," Chuck said from behind me and we all turned. "They've decided to make their last stand here."

"Last stand is right," Bobby said, his entire body icing over. "I'm sick of these people destroying my home. Not again."

I nodded once and looked everyone over. "They started this war an' we're gonna finish it."

"How should we deploy?" Angel asked, his mouth set in a grim line.

"Is Bedlam back yet?"

"Right here!" He said, running up the stairs from the lower level. "Just got back tonight actually." He grinned, clearly looking forward to this fight. "What should I fuck up first?"

Gamma team and those senior students we had previously decided would be useful finally joined us and I took a deep breath. "All right, I want Nightcrawler, Sage, Colossus, Jubilee an' Multiple Man to stay inside. Seth an' Simon too. You'll be the last line o' defense if they get through us outside. Sage, you're in charge o' the squad. The rest o' Alpha, out back."

"Wait a second, who said you were in charge here?" Scott asked sounding annoyed.

"Oh, I ain't gonna be in charge o' all of 'em Scooter," I said. "I just want Alpha Three."

"Alpha Three?"

"Beta, Delta an' Gamma, form up with Cyke here," I said, looking them over once more. "'Cept I want Cannonball, Husk an' Polaris. You'll be Alpha One this time. Mystique, you stay in with 'em. An' it might help if ya looked like me."

"Sure thing Wolverine," she said as she shifted to mimic me.

"Why are you having her do that?" One of the Gamma kids said, a girl named Tabitha Smith.

"So they don't know which is the real one," Xavier said, nodding his approval. "I assume you'll want me in Cerebro."

I nodded. "An' be ready on a moment's notice to mindblast everyone out there."

"Very well." He thumbed the control on his chair and left for the elevator.

I looked over the teams one more time and took a deep breath. "We've dicked 'round long enough. Coms on everyone, let's get this show on the road."

Alpha Two took off and Scott told his team to form up out front. I started to move out with my team, but he stopped me. "Logan, why?"

"Why what?"

"How come we're all using the Alpha designation? And why give me the kids?"

"Cyke, I dunno when ya looked at 'em last, but they ain't kids anymore, none of 'em. They've grown up over these past few weeks an' now their home's in jeopardy again. They're all full X-Men now, graduated or not."

"But…"

"No, we ain't got time for this! Just trust me, I know what I'm doin' here. Ya got a damn fine squad out there an' they'll fight like hell to save this place." I clapped him on the shoulder. "Now go, you're in charge o' all o' us. I'm just a squad leader on this one."

He nodded and went after his team. I activated my com and joined mine out in back. "Husk, you can do adamantium, right?" She nodded. "Good. As soon as ya see anythin', I want ya to metal up an' stay that way long as ya can. As for the rest o' ya, if ya can fly I want ya in the air five minutes ago. Everyone else spread out an' find cover if ya need it. Gambit, Atlas an' Bedlam, with me."

The team scattered, finding the positions that would allow them to best use their powers. I jerked my head to the three with me and started walking across the lawn. "Wolverine, _mon ami,_ what are we doin'?" Gambit asked, his staff already charged.

"Goin' into the trees to where Jubilee saw the disturbance," I replied. "They gotta know we're deployin' full teams, but they don't know who's gonna be where. I'm hopin' to draw 'em out, get 'em to chase us to the lawn where they won't have cover."

"An' you plan to do that how?"

I grinned and popped my claws. "I'm gonna piss 'em off."

We were about twenty feet into the trees when my com crackled. "Base to Wolverine." Angela said.

"Hellcat! Dahell you doin'? Why ain't you in the Danger Room?"

"I am," she replied, sounding distressed. "Buzz set up secondary communications in here. We have a problem."

"What?"

"Phoenix is missing."

I stopped in my tracks and Atlas nearly ran me over. "Repeat?"

"Phoenix is missing. I had her with me when we got down here, but I just did a head count and she's gone."

I swore softly and the three with me all looked at me curiously. "Where could she have gone?"

"I don't know and the Professor can't find her either, says she's blocking him."

"Can't he find her that way?"

"Apparently not. Wolverine, we can't leave her out there!"

I was about to reply when an electronic voice boomed through the air. "Mutant DNA detected. Mutant one-eight-six, code-name Wolverine. Initiating termination protocols." What the fuck! "Hellcat, there's no time! I'll keep an eye out, but shit's hittin' the fan out here! Out!" I heard it before I saw it, one of the small Sentinels flying overhead. Since when did they fly? "Down!" I shouted to the others as I dove into the trees. They followed suit just in time as a missile impacted the earth right where we'd been standing and exploded.

"Mutant DNA detected. Mutant two-one-seven, code-name Atlas. Mutant powers superhuman strength and endurance. Initiating capture protocols." Another Sentinel flew overhead as I heard the first one coming in for another pass and I cursed under my breath.

"Atlas! Get rid o' that thing!" I shouted. "I'm gonna lead the other one back to the lawn!"

"Affirmative!" He replied and I took off back towards the mansion. Right on cue, the first Sentinel changed course to follow me.

"Mutant DNA detected. Mutant two-two-six, code-name Gambit. Mutant power energy generation. Initiating capture protocols." It all became clear to me in that moment. The X-Men had destroyed most of Colcord's army and now he wanted to capture them and remake them. Except me and probably Angela.

"Mutant DNA detected. Mutant one-nine-eight, code-name Bedlam. Mutant powers electrical disruption and energy sensing. Initiating countermeasures and capture protocols." I broke out on the lawn and saw that the rest of the team was already engaged. Behind me, I heard the sound of something crackling and chanced a glance over my shoulder just in time to watch as a tree flew out of the woods and straight into one of the flying Sentinels – Atlas heaving the nearest weapon he could find. I kept running, looking for some way to get on a level with the thing when something rushed past me so fast I barely had time to register who or what it was. But the whoop I heard told me all I needed to know; it was Cannonball. "Mutant DNA detected. Mutant two-four-sev…" The voice was suddenly cut off when he impacted with the Sentinel and it broke apart, parts of it flying everywhere.

"Alpha One to Alpha Three, come in!" Cyclops said.

"Alpha Three, copy!" I replied.

"We've got Sentinels everywhere!" I could hear him firing his beams even as he spoke. "One for each of us!"

"Roger that! Wolverine to Magneto!"

"Yes?" He replied.

"Get out front an' assist Alpha One!"

"As you wish." I watched as he flew overhead, casually swatting a Sentinel out of the air as he went by. It crashed to the ground, disabled but not destroyed. I stalked over to it and it started its spiel about me even as I started clawing it to pieces. I don't know what a "termination protocol" is, but it didn't get far enough to employ it. I heard a loud thud behind me and turned just as another Sentinel landed. It too started its speech and I launched myself at it. A laser shot out of its eyes and I barely managed to dodge, rolling out of the way and coming up on my feet just to the left of it. It turned to fire again and I rolled under the beam this time, my claws ripping into the shell. It continued to go on about "termination protocols", but I shoved my claws into its head and shredded the main processor and it fell to the ground in a useless heap.

"Alpha Two to any other Alpha!" Sage shouted.

"Copy Alpha Two!" I shouted as Scott did the same.

"We have hostiles inside! Repeat, hostiles inside!"

Fuck! The Sentinels must have been a distraction. "Affirmative," I replied, "on my way! Storm, you're in charge out here!"

"Roger Wolverine," she replied coolly even as I heard the crack of thunder, followed by the sound of something large hitting the ground.

I took off towards the house at a run, wondering what I would find when I got inside. I hit the doors and went right through the glass, not that I cared that much and I heard the sounds of fighting in the hall just off the lounge. I rounded the corner and saw Mystique, Sage and Nightcrawler fending off at least eight Weapon X soldiers. As soon as they saw me, they paused for just a second, looking between me and Mystique, then back again. "Surprise," I said and leapt into the fray.

I gotta hand it to her. For a psycho bitch, Mystique sure had my fighting style down, which is as different from hers as it could get. Even more impressive was how she could anticipate what I was going to do and perform a move that complimented it perfectly. It still wouldn't save her from a good killing someday, but she'd been fighting by our sides for weeks on end and had given no indication that she planned to stab us in the backs. I'd never trust the bitch, but I found that I did respect her.

"Nightcrawler!" I barked as I slashed my claws across the eyes of a woman with dark brown fur and a long tail. "Get to the dart guns!"

"Roger!" He replied and teleported away. The stinky cloud he left behind momentarily choked another soldier and I took advantage of that to shove my claws in his belly. The elf returned a moment later and without hesitation he took aim and fired. It hit the guy I'd just stabbed in the upper arm and he snarled and pulled it out, tossing it aside. But the damage was already done and I ripped my claws out to the side. He grinned coldly for a split second, then realized he wasn't healing and his expression changed to one of horror. I lashed out again and removed his arm at the elbow – no adamantium in this guy – and he let out a strangled scream before falling to the floor.

More soft puffs followed as Nightcrawler continued to dart the opposition. None of them were as stupid as I could have wished. Having seen what happened to their comrade after being darted, they beat a hasty retreat out of the house. Mystique and Sage took off in pursuit and I turned to Kurt. "Nice goin', Elf," I said, clapping him on the back. "How many o' those did ya grab?"

He opened up the long coat he wore with his uniform, exposing three two-holster harnesses underneath. "All of them," he replied with a grin.

"Great! Get 'em outside to at least Rogue, Echo an' Sunfire."

"As you vish," he said and bamfed away.

"Wolverine to Storm," I said into my com. "Status?"

"Storm here," she replied calmly, even though I could still hear thunder. "Sentinels almost all destroyed, but have hostiles coming in from all sides!"

"Copy that. Nightcrawler on the way with the special weapons.'

"Affirmative. You coming back?"

"Ya think I'd miss all the fun?" I replied and took off back outside. I got out on the patio and skidded to a halt, amazed at the sight before me. At least a hundred and fifty soldiers were coming in from the woods and over the walls, engaging the X-Men in groups of as many as ten on one. I snarled and dashed towards the nearest group, my claws reflecting the flashes from Storm's lightning bolts. Soldiers came at me from all sides, dropping the fights they were already engaged in to try and get a piece of me. A guy with impossibly white skin tackled me and slashed at my face, opening cuts deep enough to expose the metal underneath. He raised his hand – fingers really just five long white spikes – but I grabbed his shirt and gave him a brutal head butt before tossing him off me. I leapt back to my feet and received a kick to the gut from another soldier. I lashed down with my claws and grunted as they met with adamantium bones. But the woman screamed and fell anyway, the wounds knitting back together – she'd not been darted yet, obviously – and she was replaced by another guy who topped me by more than a foot. I shamelessly kicked him in the balls as hard as I could, elbowing him in the face as he went down, clutching himself. The woman got back up and literally flew at me, snarling. I raised my claws and slashed her open as she flew past and she fell again.

I fought my way across the lawn, kicking, punching and slashing a seemingly endless sea of enemies, until I reached a large group that had Totem pinned down. I had just come up behind one of the guys facing off with him when a bright flash exploded behind me and all the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Instinctively, I turned around and looked up, my mouth falling open at what I saw. At first, I wasn't sure who it was. The only students I'd ever seen covered in fire like that were Sunfire, who was already flying around overhead and Magma to some extent, who was out front with Scott's team. As soon as my eyes adjusted to the glare, I realized who it had to be: Phoenix.

She was up on the roof, flames licking over her body, her hands held out before her. 'Stop!' I heard in my mind and the soldiers froze in place, unable to move. All the other X-Men stopped and stared up at her.

Totem looked at me in shock. "Did you hear that, Wolverine?"

I nodded mutely, staring up at the little girl above us. 'I won't let you hurt them anymore!'

"You traitorous little bitch!" I heard from behind me and turned around to see none other than Malcolm Colcord burst through the trees accompanied by about a dozen normal human soldiers.

She turned her flame-filled gaze on him. 'Ah, my so-called father. I wondered where you were.'

"Shoot her!" Colcord barked to the men around him and they all aimed their weapons at her.

"No!" I shouted and took off at a run across the lawn, even though I knew I'd never make it before they could fire. But I figured I could at least kill them and avenge her, if nothing else.

But before I even closed half the distance, the weapons were ripped from their hands and tossed deep into the forest behind them. 'I don't think so,' I heard and I knew everyone could hear her too. 'Did you think you could lie to _me_? Did you think I couldn't see what you really thought of me, of all of us? Did you think because I was just a kid that I wouldn't get it?'

"I _made_ you!" Colcord cried, walking towards the house. "You belong to me! You wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for me!"

'I belong to no one but _me_. And I exist because you wanted to see if you could do it. But you didn't know what you made when you made me. You never bothered to find out about her, but I did! I saw her when you brought me here, in the Professor's mind and I knew! And when I saw the others in his mind, Cyclops and Wolverine, Storm and Beast and even Atlas, I knew the truth!'

"You know nothing! You are mine, you hear me? Mine!"

'No, not anymore. Never again. I'd rather die.' The light behind me brightened and Colcord winced. 'But today is not my day to die. You, on the other hand, don't have much time left.' He stopped dead in his tracks, paralyzed by her telekinesis. 'Wolverine, he's all yours.'

I smiled coldly and stalked across the lawn. I vaguely heard people shouting behind me, but a roaring in my ears drowned out their voices, my vision coming over in a deep crimson like fresh-spilled blood. The human soldiers took a single step towards me, but stopped dead before flying back into the forest. I barely heard their grunts and screams as they impacted trees or the ground before becoming silent. "Alpha One to Wolverine, stand down!" I heard Scott shout into the com, so I ripped the thing out and tossed it aside. I didn't need his over-righteous bullshit in my head right now. Only one thing mattered to me – ripping this guy apart and scattering the pieces.

I reached Colcord and retracted the claws on my right hand, then grabbed him by his shirt. His eyes were wide, wild and he stank of fear. "No more, ya hear me!" I growled in his face. "Never again!"

"You can't stop it, Wolverine!" he shrieked. "Weapon X is everywhere! Kill me and someone else will just take my place!"

"Then they'll die. An' the next one. An' the next. I will never stop til you're all dead!" I shook him hard and he grunted in pain. "Ya hear me! Never!"

He laughed shrilly, on the edge of hysteria. "You can't stop us! We're everywhere! Everyone has their own Weapon X!"

"I'll hunt every one o' ya down. There's nowhere they can hide that I won't find 'em."

"You don't understand at all, do you Wolverine? It's only a matter of time before you all die anyway! Do you really believe this army is it? It's only the beginning!"

"An' it's the end! NO MORE!" I plunged my other claws into his chest and he gasped as I gave them a vicious twist. "No more." I dropped his body to the ground and retracted my claws. I turned to face the others and saw that Totem had come up behind me at some point. I smiled at him and wiped blood off my face with my forearm. "It's over, Kyro."

He shook his head almost sadly. "No, Logan-san. I fear it is only beginning."

I started to ask him what he meant when the bright light on the roof suddenly died. I snapped my head up in time to see Phoenix collapse in a heap. "No!" I shouted and started running towards the house. I ran right into Nightcrawler after only a few steps and I grabbed him by the coat. "Get me up there, now!" He didn't ask any questions, just took hold of me and in a single disorienting moment I was on the roof. Rachel lay up there, a thin trickle of blood coming out of her nose. I fell to my knees and gathered her into my arms, an eerie sense of déjà vu coming over me as I remembered doing the same for another young girl a little over ten years earlier. "C'mon kid, wake up," I whispered, my voice tight. "Don't do this, I can't help ya like I helped Rogue."

She whimpered and her eyes fluttered open. "Oh, my head hurts," she said weakly.

I breathed a sigh of relief and hugged her fiercely. "Jesus kid, don't do that to me again!" She gave a weak little laugh and I pulled away to look her over. "Dahell didja do that for? Why didn't ya stay with Angela?"

"I didn't want anyone to get hurt anymore." She sat up and rubbed her head again. "I don't think I'm ready to try that again though."

"I didn't know ya could do anythin' like that."

"Me either." I couldn't help but laugh and I hugged her again, then helped her to her feet.

I looked out over the lawn and saw that all the Weapon X soldiers had fallen where they stood and none of them was moving. "What happened to them?" I asked, looking down at her.

She looked up at me and a brief flicker of flame went through her eyes. "Nothing can live after the brain dies."

My eyes widened slightly as a chill went down my spine. Colcord really hadn't had any idea what he'd created when he made her. And now I wondered exactly what it was we had among us.

* * *

**AN: **Check that out! Two battles in a row:) Special thanks to my beta reader, Turiel Tincdaniel, for all of her hard work...Super Special thanks to all of my readers, just for reading...and Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were Andromeda Jones, LifeBringsMeOnlyTears, theNightEnchantress and a new face, Morgomir! Miss Jones: Do you really think i'm gonna tell you if she's having twins or not? ;) Sam: Is this enough action for ya? ;-) Morgomir: Thank you so much for all of your kind words and reviews...:) If you want more info on my job, check out my LiveJournal! rowenadevandal DOT livejournal DOT com...i rant on there quite often about things that piss me off...:) Or make me laugh on occasion...:) 

Now, i DO want to let you all know that this is the 2nd to last chapter...that's right, the next chapter finishes this story...but never fear! There's yet another one in the works, though if i'm not done with it by November 1st, it won't be finished until after December 1st due to NaNoWriMo...more info on that can be found in my profile and if any of you want to give it a shot, i've also set up a forum for us, the link for that is also in my profile...:)

**Now why don't you follow Morgomir's fine example and drop me a line? Come on, it's the last chapter! Wouldn't you rather see it sooner than later:)**


	22. Epilogue

Epilogue

**One Month Later**

"…And in other news, the Pentagon released several recently declassified documents today that detail a previously unknown program that used living mutants as test subjects. Mutant supporters in the House and Senate are outraged that nothing was known about this before. Steve Rogers, better known as Captain America, has been named in some of these documents as one of the first subjects in the program, though it is also indicated that he volunteered for the procedure. It is unclear at this time if further subjects were also volunteers, but more documents are scheduled for release in the next few days. Here to tell us more about this startling discovery is Richard Barnes. Richard?"

"Thank you, Amanda. It was thought that the American people could never be capable of the same types of atrocities perpetrated by such people as Adolf Hitler, but this discovery has proven that theory to be dangerously wrong…"

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**Two Weeks Later**

**"…**A Senate sub-committee appointed by the President to investigate the now-publicly known 'Weapon Plus' program met yesterday to hear testimony from several unidentified individuals, presumed to be mutants. The persons requested they not be identified and only agreed to testify on the condition of complete anonymity. However, a portion of the transcript has been released and some of the things these persons detailed are horrifying to say the least. Here with more is our White House correspondent, David Archer. David?"

"Thank you, Richard. We were unable to film any of the proceedings due to the requests of the individuals who testified, but the White House Press Secretary released part of yesterday's transcript to us exclusively. They described procedures that include cranial implants, electroshock conditioning and even a process that bonded a highly toxic metal known as 'adamantium' to the skeletons of several individuals. Now, we do not have all the details at this time and the persons are expected to give testimony for the next few days, but it is rumored that they brought x-rays, MRI scans and other medical records that prove the truth of their statements. The committee is also scheduled to hear testimony from medical professionals from a variety of fields, most notable of which is Dr. Moira McTaggert, the world's foremost expert on the mutant phenomenon. However, experts from other fields have already released statements debunking this testimony as 'implausible', 'scientifically impossible' and even 'pure fabrication'. It is unclear at this time if the individuals will be asked to submit to testing by Senate appointed doctors, but it is rumored that this will be case. Back to you, Richard."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**Three Days Later**

"…Our first story for tonight concerns the testimony of the still unknown individuals for the Senate sub-committee that is investigating the previously unknown 'Weapon Plus' program. Here with more is our White House correspondent, David Archer. David?"

"Thank you Amanda. In a startling development, one of the unidentified people shocked the committee today when he reportedly leapt over a table, ejected what was described as 'a steel knife' from his hand and literally peeled the flesh from his own arm, exposing what one source called 'something out of The Terminator'. This was apparently in response to the testimony of one Doctor Craig Marsh, considered to be one of the foremost experts in orthopedics, who testified that it would be impossible to bond metal to someone's bones without killing the subject. Dr. Marsh also said that doing so would prevent the creation of new blood cells from the bone marrow, so even if the subject did survive, he would eventually die anyway. Our source also reported that the man's arm seemed to heal up in a matter of moments after he replaced the skin and muscles. However, we have been unable to confirm this and testimony is expected to continue well into next week. Back to you, Amanda."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**Five Days Later**

"…We continue our coverage of the 'Weapon Plus' investigation today with another shocking discovery by the Senate Sub-Committee. Here with more is our White House correspondent. David?"

"Thank you, Richard. As expected, the unidentified mutants were asked to submit to a battery of tests by court-appointed experts. The three people in question were reluctant to do so and our source reports that one of them said 'we've been messed with enough already'. However, they did eventually agree and testimony is expected to resume the day after tomorrow. Back to you."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**Two Days Later**

"…Testimony resumed on Capitol Hill today for the ongoing investigation into the 'Weapon Plus' program. Here with more is David Archer. David?"

"Thank you, Amanda. Our source reports that the findings of the court-appointed experts confirm the testimony of the still-unnamed mutants who were reportedly part of this 'Weapon Plus' program. But even more shocking is the testimony of these individuals that the program had experimented on mutants as young as the age of ten. Also revealed was a project that reportedly successfully cloned at least two other mutants. These supposed clones, who are both minor children and will not be identified, are currently wards of Professor Charles Xavier, headmaster of the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters in New York State. However, in light of the confirmation that the 'Weapon Plus' program did indeed experiment on the unknown individuals, the committee is not asking for proof that the cloning experiment was indeed successful at this time. The three individuals concluded their testimony today and returned to an undisclosed location immediately afterwards. Professor Xavier was not available for comment on the minor children, but is expected to release a statement at a later date. Back to you, Amanda."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**Three Weeks Later**

(Logan)

"…And in our continuing coverage of the 'Weapon Plus' investigation, more records were released today that name Malcolm Colcord as the man directly in charge of the program. Also named was Colonel William Stryker, who has been missing in action for the past eleven years and is presumed dead. Malcolm Colcord is most well known as former President Colcord, who took office after a series of unfortunate accidents took the lives of the President and Vice-President while he was Speaker for the House. It is unclear if anyone else in the government or military structure had any knowledge of this, but at this point anything is certainly possible. It has also been indicated that the program may be even more far-reaching than originally thought, and that several other governments may have been involved. The President is expected to meet with several heads of state to discuss this possibility. Richard?"

"Thank you, Amanda. In a related story, the American Civil Liberties Union is calling for reparations to be made to the still-unknown mutants who gave testimony over the past few weeks, stating that it's the least the government could do after allowing such atrocities to occur right under their noses. But the question on our minds is how can we put a price tag on the lives of these poor people? Transcripts of the testimony indicate that the only reason they survived the tortures that were done to them is due to their mutation. But how many people did this program go through to find the ones who would survive? Who were they and how do we make reparations to them? But perhaps even more astonishing is the outpouring of support for mutants in general and these anonymous individuals in particular, not to mention the general outrage the American people have expressed as a whole over these atrocities. I never thought I would see this in my lifetime, but it seems that complete acceptance of these extraordinarily gifted people has come at last."

I clicked off the television and sat back on the sofa gently so as not to wake Angela. We were both extremely grateful that the weeks of testimony were finally over, but Bennington had made good on his promise to expose Weapon X to the world. I smiled to myself as I imagined the heads of the program in other countries scrambling to bury their involvement in this thing, but I didn't worry about that. They'd come after us or they wouldn't. Either way, we'd be ready.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**Two Months Later**

"C'mon tiger, just one more push!" I said as Angela tried her best to crush my hand. She looked me in the eyes and gritted her teeth, pushing so hard her face turned red. So far, this labor had been much easier and faster than when she had Evie, though it still looked awful to me. But what do I know? I'm a man.

"You're doing great, Angela!" Dr. Owens said, then looked up and smiled. "The next one should do it!"

"Why do you people always say that?" Angela complained, her voice pained. "It's _always_ the next one!"

"But this time it'll be true, ok?" Another contraction wracked her body and she moaned. "Good, now push! Really hard this time!"

"You think…I've been…slacking…up here?" She said as she pushed, then cried out in sudden triumph. She chuckled weakly and collapsed into her pillows, then reached up and stroked my cheek. "Didn't we agree you were having the next one when Evie was born?"

"I didn't agree to anythin'," I replied, turning my face to kiss her palm. She smiled again and I leaned over to kiss her softly. "I love you, angel."

"Mm, love you too."

A few seconds later, the baby gave a hearty cry and we both looked up. "It's a boy!" Dr. Owens announced and I gave a whoop of joy. Finally, I wouldn't be the only male in the pack! Angela laughed at me and I grinned, just happy to have the hard part over with.

The doctor handed over the blanketed bundle a few minutes later and Angela opened her gown to nurse our son for the first time. I sniffed back tears as I looked down and she smiled at me again. "For such a tough guy, you sure get emotional."

"Can't help it, darlin'." I said, wiping my eyes. "Just when I think ya can't make me any happier, ya go an' give me a son. What's next?"

"Another one?" She replied and I laughed. "What? I know I bitch during the delivery, but I'd give you a hundred children if you wanted them."

"Nah, not that many. Ten okay with you?"

"Do Laura and Rachel count?" I laughed again and kissed her, completely unable to see any way to be any happier than I was at that moment.

A few hours later, Dr. Owens released Angela and our son, Connor James, and we returned to the suite we'd lived in for the best part of both our lives. Evie had been so excited to have a brother that she gave up her room and moved in next door with Laura and Rachel. The three of them had spent the entire previous month redecorating her old room, using what Evie called "crayon colors" since we hadn't wanted to know the gender of the baby before it was born. Now that she knew she had a brother, she was already talking about decorating it again using "boy things", but we convinced her to wait at least a little while.

Angela was napping in our room while I watched my son sleep. I had done the same with Evie and saw no reason to stop that tradition. I reached into the cradle and stroked his tiny head gently with one finger. "Hey there little guy, it's your daddy. I'm kinda gettin' used to doin' this. Just wanted to let ya know how much I love you, even if ya don't know what I'm sayin' right now. An' I wanted to warn ya too, 'cause me an' you are the only guys in this family. I'm hopin' to talk your mommy into a couple more, but I can't promise they'll be comin' along any time soon.

"We been through a lot these past couple o' years, but I hope what we did made everythin' safer for you an' your sisters. We did lots o' bad things, but we had good reasons. Lots o' people say that, but we really mean it. There's a bunch o' bad people that can't do what they did to us anymore, 'cause we told the whole world. An' we did it 'cause o' you an' your sisters an' all the crazy people in this house. Someday, when you're older, we'll tell you an' your sisters all 'bout it. But right now all you need to know is that I love you." I looked around, but Angela hadn't woken up this time. I leaned over and kissed my son lightly on his forehead and he stirred a little but didn't wake up. I walked quietly into the room I shared with Angela and wrapped myself around her.

She rolled over and snuggled under my chin. "You were talking to him, weren't you?" She mumbled sleepily.

I chuckled. "Yeah, I was. How'd ya know?"

"You did it with Evie. Didn't think Connor would be any different."

"Great, I'm gettin' predictable. Better get out the old man pants an' start wearin' sandals with black socks." She made a gagging sound and I laughed a little harder. "It was a joke, darlin'."

"Don't make jokes like that. Black socks and sandals are a divorcing offense."

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh really."

"Mm-hm. Just be glad I don't include 'hairy back' in there or else you'd be screwed."

"I do not have a hairy back!" I said, tickling her. She yelped then quickly covered her mouth, glaring at me. I smiled and kissed her. "Bet I can still surprise ya."

"Oh yeah? How?"

"Marry me."

She rolled her eyes. "Logan, we're already married."

"No, I mean again. Marry me again. I wanna give ya a real weddin' this time, with bridesmaids an' flowers. Hell, I'll even wear a tuxedo."

"Logan…"

"I mean it. An' it means a lot to me do this for you. Marry me." She leaned forward and kissed me, tears in her eyes, and that was all the answer I needed.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

**Three Months Later**

I stood in front of the double doors to the patio, trying not to fidget with the collar of my shirt. Sam, Kyro, Remy, Hank and Buzz (who's real name I learned is Christopher Carson) stood beside me, with Storm, Chasca, Marie, Kitty and Jubilee across from them, Kurt standing in the middle. Snow still covered the ground outside, but one of the kids - a girl named Casey - had managed to get her hands on some small evergreen shrubs and holly bushes and she used her mutation to grow them to full maturity over the past couple of days. They stood just outside the windows, softening the unbroken whiteness outside with various shades of green and the bright red holly berries. All the girls were wearing purple, Angela's favorite color, and surprisingly no one complained about it.

Kurt gestured to Simon, who had been waiting to start the music. As the first notes filled the air, the Professor came into view from a side hallway and waited at the base of the stairs. A few seconds later, Laura, Evie and Rachel came gliding carefully down the stairs, from smallest to tallest, with Angela right behind them. She was breathtaking in a simple white silk gown, long sleeved but leaving her shoulders bare, with only a tiny bit of glittering beadwork at the neckline. Her hair was swept up with a few loose curls framing her face, white roses and other little white flowers the only other decoration on her head. In her arms, instead of a bouquet, she carried our son, who slept peacefully for the time being. I swear, my heart stopped beating for a moment when I saw her and I couldn't imagine loving her more.

The girls came forward and stood with the others, while Xavier met Angela at the base of the stairs and escorted her to the front. He put her hand in mine, kissing hers briefly and we turned to Kurt. We didn't have a long ceremony planned and Kurt surprised me a bit when he didn't complain that we weren't having a particular Christian kind of wedding. He'd simply smiled and said "it doesn't matter what you have faith in, as long as you _have _faith." He nodded to us and began.

Angela handed Connor to Storm and turned to me, smiling with tears in her eyes. Kurt told us to join hands and we got through all the normal vows, the better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness and health until death do us part - the last couple bits getting a laugh from the gathering - then he looked over our assembled friends and surrogate family. "Angela and Logan vould now like to exchange vows they have written themselves," he said and stepped back.

I looked down at her and took a deep breath. "Ya know, I ain't never been very good with words," I began with a slight catch in my voice and she smiled at me. "An' right now ain't no exception. But I wanted ya to know that I love you more'n just about anythin' in the whole world. I must, since I'm marryin' ya twice." Another laugh rippled through the crowd and I went on when they settled down. "But the way I see it, we've already been through the worst together an' I woulda never made it through it without you. So now it's time for the better part an' I don't wanna spend it with anyone else. I don't know 'bout the til death do us part stuff, 'cause I ain't sure we'll ever die, but if I have to live for another thousand years, I wanna spend 'em with you." I could hear people sniffling and the rustling of tissues or handkerchiefs, but my eyes were still locked with Angela's, who had her own tears trickling down her cheeks. I reached out and brushed them away with my thumb, smiling.

She smiled back and took a deep breath of her own. "Logan, I've loved you almost from the first moment I laid eyes on you. I saw you and something inside me wanted you so much I couldn't think of anything else. Yes, we have survived the worst things imaginable and I know I never would have made it if I didn't have you to keep me strong. You've always been my hero and I can't imagine my life without you in it. You're probably right, that even death won't be able to part us, at least not for long." This prompted another laugh from our friends. "But every day that I am alive, I want to spend with you. All of them, until the end of time."

I looked down and shook my head a little, hoping no one had seen the tear that rolled down my cheek or at least that they'd never be dumb enough to mention it to me. She smiled up at me, then wrapped her arms around me and I hugged her close for a moment until I'd pulled myself back together. We turned back to Kurt, who gave me a knowing look. He leaned in and lowered his voice. "I vill take your secret to my grave, _mein freunde,_" he said with a wink, then straightened up. "Are there rings?"

I turned to Sam as Angela turned to Marie to retrieve the rings we'd exchanged once before, but now they were a little different. Simon had asked for them back the day before and had given them to our best man and maid of honor before we could see them. I looked down at the band in my hand and I couldn't help but smile. Now set across the top of her band were three stones, birthstones for each of our children and one for me in the center, embedded permanently in the adamantium. I looked as she handed mine over and saw that it had the same except with her birthstone in the middle. I smiled when I saw them, then turned my attention back to Kurt.

"The ring is the outvard symbol of the vows these two take today," he said, holding them up. "But these are even more special, as they are as indestructible as the two who vill be vearing them." Yet another laugh went through the gathering and even I couldn't help but smile. "More importantly, they are proof that no matter vhat the intention may have been for something, it is possible to become something greater, something better." He handed us the rings and I slipped Angela's on gently and she followed suit. Kurt smiled at us and motioned for us to turn around. "By the power vested in me by the state of New York, I now pronounce you husband and vife." We looked over our shoulders and he grinned. "You may kiss the bride."

I swept Angela into my arms and kissed her passionately, only breaking away when air became an issue. "I love you tiger," I whispered, my forehead pressed to hers.

"I love you too," she replied and kissed me again softly.

Kurt came forward again holding a white silk scarf that Marie had given us for the ceremony. "And now for the last part vhich vas requested by the bride," he said. "Logan, please take Angela's right hand vith your left." We did as he instructed and he wrapped the scarf around our wrists, binding them together. "As the right hand is to the left hand, may you be forever one, sharing in all things, at home and abroad, in love and loyalty for all time to come," he said as he tied it off and smiled.

Angela turned to Storm and gathered Connor into her arms again, then we both turned around and faced our gathered friends. "Ladies and gentleman, may I present Mr. and Mrs. Logan." A cheer went up and we made our way carefully back down the aisle. Connor finally woke up and gave a cry of protest, and Angela sighed heavily.

"Uh, what're we s'posed to do now?" I asked, holding up our still-bound hands, which from what I understood we weren't allowed to untie until the next day.

She smiled at me, then kissed our son gently. "Don't worry lover. We'll work it out. We always do."

I lifted our joined hands and kissed hers softly. She'd called me her hero, but she was mine for so many reasons. She'd saved my life and my mind twice, given me two beautiful children and helped me learn how to love and trust again. Over a decade ago, I'd made up my mind to get away from all of this and go back to being alone. But the simple need for a beer had changed everything and now I didn't want to be alone anymore. I now had a family and a wife I can't imagine living without. And I will do whatever I have to do to keep them all safe, until death do us part.

**The End**

**(For now)**

* * *

**AN:** Well, that's it Faithful Readers...this is the end of this chapter in the ongoing saga...and yes, it IS ongoing...:) I am working on the next installment, though it has been a bit slow going...the muse and i are having a difference of opinion, but i'm not gonna say over what...:) You'll just have to sit there and speculate until i'm done...:) Special thanks to my beta reader, Turiel Tincdaniel, for her support and assistance throughout this entire epic...Super Special thanks to all of my readers, just for reading...:) And Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were Morgomir, LifeBringsMeOnlyTears and TnTornado...:) Morgomir: Thanks for visiting my LJ:) And i'll see what i can do about having the next installment ready for your birthday...if not, i'll see about Christmas...can you wait that long? ;-) LBMOT: OMG you're making me blush! Thank you for your kind words and gushing praise...but really...::BLUSH:: But i will say this much, a little bone thrown out there for you all to speculate about...you are correct that the whole story on Phoenix has not been told...:) Mr. Tornado: Problems? Would I do that::batting eyelashes innocently:: Don't worry, Logan and Angela will continue to act as Rachel's guardians...but there are certain aspects of the Phoenix saga i wish to explore...and that's all i'm going to say about that...:)

Now, if you don't hear from me on this saga or any of my other stories before December, blame NaNoWriMo...i'm hoping to produce something that could be worthy of actual publication...:) And if that happens, you'll all be the first to know! But i still have time before that starts and i am hoping to finish the next story before November 1st...i make NO promises! But i will try...:)

**Again, thanks to everyone for sharing this with me...it's a blast to write and i hope you all had a great time reading it!**


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